Clearly I like to write about my feelings. I have eleventy billion journals floating around my apartment — some written in, others just sitting there and judging me with their sad, blank pages. There’s something about putting pen to paper that has always felt right (and always will), something no amount of page views or likes can ever replace. One of my J-school profs described writing as a disease, and I was left with the image of the illness leaving our veins through the ink and spilling onto the page, into the world.
With that in mind, the last thing I need is another journal. Yet here I am, about to tell you a cute little serendipitous story about a journal I picked up yesterday. I’ve been feeling a bit meh lately (a B.A. in English lit and a post-grad in journalism, and I’m sticking with ‘meh’), as have a few of those near and dear to me. In an attempt to see the sunshine through the clouds, I took part in one of those positivity challenges on Facebook, the chain-letter type of thing I typically avoid. While it did take absentminded me a full seven days to do what was supposed to take five, I have to admit that being forced to think of something positive every damn day keeps me in that optimistic place I strive to stay. So, when a friend mentioned keeping a journal specifically to continue writing down daily positives, I thought that was a pretty damn good idea. When I saw this at Chapters last night, it would’ve been a crime not to get one for each of us:
Each page has enough space for one reason why today didn’t suck, and an accompanying encouraging (but not too syrupy) quote, like this gem:
So last night, when I settled in to write about what made me happy (finding this song, with its heart-stopping lyrics), I found this inscription on the first page:
The fact that this dad bought this for his daughter made my heart grow three sizes. It puzzles me as to how it ended up back on the shelf. Did Barbara return it, not noticing the inscription? Did he write it in the store and accidentally pick up an unblemished copy? No matter how it ended up in my possession, it seems right. It might just be the journal I needed to fill every page. Thanks, Barbara’s Dad. I feel a little recharged already.
Steph Not Stephanie 