What if you used a trip diary to record a different kind of travel – a journey into the milestones of your life or the lives of loved ones? Did you ever think that your everyday life is an adventure worth preserving?
We travel for lots of reasons, such as to enrich our lives, to relax, or to visit friends and family. Travel journals are the perfect tool to capture our travel experiences, so we can preserve them and relive them.
Historians use diaries to gain information about the past. A good example is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. Her father’s restlessness caused the Ingalls family to move across the Unites States, which became the basis of these famous books. A more tragic story comes from one of the most famous journals, The Diary of Anne Frank. The author described a journey that forever left a mark on history.
What do Anne Frank and Laura Ingalls Wilder have in common? Neither knew they were making history when they started their journals. Both of these girls lived extraordinary lives but started out writing about ordinary circumstances. When Anne Frank made her first diary entry, she wrote about her birthday. She did not know that her diary would become a book and historical document.
The words ‘journey’ and ‘journal’ come from the same root, from the French word meaning “a day.” Anne Frank and Laura Ingalls Wilder captured the journey of a day. All those days added up to a legacy.
What if you were to start your journal as travel of a day? Can you imagine what you would have if you wrote one sentence and took a photo of something, every day for one year? Perhaps you start out recording the ordinary, but if something extraordinary happened, it would be easy to write about it since you have already begun your daily journal.
You could concentrate on special events, such as social and family gatherings, trips, family traditions, holidays, or historical moments. Perhaps you could write about tiny trips, such as going to a movie or out to dinner. These may not seem important now, but can you imagine your grandchildren reading what you wrote?
What if you made this a family project? Imagine what you would have if every night before bedtime, your children wrote something about their day? In these days of economic uncertainty, a keepsake like this would be priceless.
If you want to, you may add photos to your journey journal. You can keep them on a CD or DVD and store them in a pocket in your diary. If your journal doesn’t have a pocket page, you can attach a CD sleeve to the inside back cover.
You can start your armchair travel anytime. Your birthday, the New Year, or today. Remember, you are capturing history, and history does not make an appointment. So why not start now? You never know what will happen tomorrow.
Oscar Wilde wrote, said, “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” Perhaps your journal will not make for sensational reading now, but later, when the memories are cold and forgotten, you will have created a legacy.
Ways to re-commit to your Diet.
1) Re-commit. Take a minute to look back and remember why you decided to diet in the first place. Perhaps it was out of a health concern or perhaps you decided to go into this out of wanting to shed a few pounds. On a blank sheet of paper write down what ever action brought you to start a diet.
Next ask yourself to remember the feeling that brought you to this resolution. What where you feeling when you decided to do this? Where you feeling fear, disappointment, concern? What ever the reason or feeling you had at the time, revisit that and re-focus your efforts.
2) Start a Diet journal. Starting a journal of any sort can be a daunting task but can be a very powerful tool to add to any diet. A journal can help dieters keep track of food by adding accountability. I can think of at least one VERY well known diet plan that uses accountability as it’s prime tool in the battle of the belly fat.
The two things you’ll need in order to make a diet journal work are honesty and regularity. You must be honest enough to write down what you’ve had and you must make entries with regularity in order to make sure you’ve stuck to your.
3) Drink lots of water. You hear it all the time but it’s a fact, water is good for you. Some studies have also shown that people often mistake thirst for hunger. And we all know that hunger is a dieter’s worst enemy. That said, the next time you think you might be hungry, stop for a sec and be sure. If not it may just be a question of easily extinguishing this urge with a glass of water.
I might also add to be sure it’s water. None of this sugar substituted iced tea stuff, just plain old water.
4) Read the nutritional information. Whether you’re on a diet or not, reading the nutritional information is always a good idea. In fact I dare say that a dieter who does not read the nutritional information is akin to a financial expert who refuses to read bank statements. After all how do you know what you’re eating if you don’t even know what’s in it. Burying your head in the sand might make eating that tasty treat easier in the short term but you owe it to yourself and your diet to read what’s in it.
I sure hope this helps, they’re just a couple things I’m trying out myself so I decided to share with all of you as well. Till next time.
Happy Dieting
People have been keeping journals and diaries for a long time and for some very good reasons. Journaling has many benefits that can impact a person’s mental health, creativity, and memory. If you don’t keep a journal, perhaps you should consider it. Here are a few reasons why journaling every day is a great idea….
To express your feelings. Every human being experiences emotions and some of these feelings can be hard to handle. If you’re going through a rough time or need an outlet for your emotions, writing in a journal can be a big help. It can help you process difficult feelings like loneliness, depression, and anger, and also serve as a record for your more positive emotions. If nothing else, writing about your feelings can help you sort them out so you can accept them and move on. It’s almost like free therapy which can be really helpful.
To record your life. While many people record their activities via social media websites such as Facebook, there’s something homey and quaint about recording one’s activities in a journal. For one thing, you don’t need an Internet connection to do so. (That is, if you’re using a paper journal as opposed to an online service like LiveJournal.) All of your experiences will be chronicled in a book that you can take down off the shelf so you can remember the good times (and the bad times, if you wish).
To keep track of inspiration. Writers and artists can really benefit from journaling. If you’re out in the world and inspiration hits, you can jot down your ideas or even do a quick sketch so you can work with the material later on. Trying to remember creative fragments (i.e. a few notes of music, a phrase for a poem, bits of a dream, etc.) can be difficult, but if you have a record of them, you’ll be able to use them at a later time.
To save mementos. You don’t just need to draw and/or write in your journal. You can also use it as a kind of scrapbook and paste photos, postcards, ticket stubs, and more in it. This is an especially good thing to do if you take a special trip somewhere or go to a great concert. It will also make looking through the journal really enjoyable in the future.
To get creative. The best thing about journaling is that your journal is yours. You can get as creative as you want with it; no one will judge you for how you keep it or what you put into it. You can write with colorful markers or soft pencils. In all caps or small letters or a mix of both. It’s up to you. If you want, you can even create your own journal if you have cover stock, paper, and access to a binding machine. This can make the book really special and you won’t have to shell out money for a store-bought journal.
Journaling every day can be beneficial for many reasons. It can help you process feelings, record life events, and encourage you to be more creative. Start keeping your own journal today.