A New Year's Resolution...

Christmas was nice, quiet and uneventful. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? Sunday night we drove up to the temple to see the "Festival of Lights," a yearly event and noted attraction in this region.

With Christmas in the rear view mirror, and another day off work on my doorstep, my thoughts have turned to the new year. I'm not a big proponent of New Year's Resolutions. It seems to me that if you have to wait for the new year to make an improvement in your life, either (A) whatever it is you've waited to begin doing (or stop doing) isn't really that important to you; or (B) you're just plain lazy and should have done it a long time ago, which probably means you won't do it this time either.

Okay, so that sounds rather jaded! I guess I'm the type of person that when I realize something needs to be done, I do it. I don't see much point in waiting around to do something that should/could be done now.

All that said, I'm going against my own jaded-ness and making a resolution for 2005. Starting in the new year, I plan to keep a regular journal. For the last few years it's been awfully convenient for me to make annotations in Anne's journal. She's a faithful journal keeper, so I figure that I married her must count for something in my column.

There we will be, at night, me reading and Anne journaling, or whatever you call it. If something has been particularly worthy of recording, I'll say, "Do me a favor, make a note about [something]." If I could keep a journal by dictation, that'd be great, but this is the real world and I can't afford a personal secretary to transcribe that kind of thing.

One of my college roommates was good about keeping a journal. One night I returned home after an evening out (doing what? who knows--I didn't keep a journal then, either!) and I found him writing in his journal. He was writing, I didn't want to disturb him, so we didn't talk. I got ready for bed, climbed into my bed, and turned my light off. After a moment or two, he stated, "I'd sure hate it if I had to write in my journal that Eddie didn't pray before going to bed." Albeit grudgingly, I climbed out of bed and prayed. After all, you can't have something negative about you actually recorded in print.

So why haven't I kept a journal? I'd chalk it up to reason B: laziness. Another justification has been my memory. I remember details and dates fairly easily, but, time marches on and I have to count on the fact that my memory won't always be what it is today (steel trap vs. steel sieve). Since returning from my mission, an ever-increasing number of years ago, I have rarely recorded any of my thoughts or activities. And some important stuff has happened... graduated college, got married, had a kid or two, bought a house, etc.

I don't expect my writing to be anything along the lines of the journals of Anne or Wilford Woodruff. But hey, my thoughts and activities are entertaining enough that they could provide entertainment for some poor, bored soul in my family's future. Whether I write weekly or monthly, it will be more than I'm doing now.

So, here's to a journal!