Put it in writing!

I am not a very good journaler, but a few things have made me really think about how important it is to write things down. My daughter was here visiting a couple weeks ago and we were talking about things from her childhood. There are so many things that I have forgotten and wish that I could get back. She had an imaginary friend at one time and for the life of me, I cannot remember the name that she had given him. I just know it was something she made up.

A week or so ago, my sister pulled out an old photo album of my moms and brought it over. We don't know who many of the people in the album are or where many of the locations are that are in the pictures. So, what do we do with these pictures? No sense in keeping them, with no one to tell us who they are. Of course now we are really curious and would love to know about the photos. If they were important enough to take a picture, develop, and put in an album, then I am sure they meant something to my mother. I now am learning to at least write on the back of pictures, and make sure I know what pictures they are before it is too late to find out.

Along with this album, there were many things that I could see were my mothers own style of scrapbooking and remembering. She had newspaper clippings of many events and copies of things such as my high school diploma and pictures that my daughter had drawn for her. The one thing that really touched me, was one of the napkins from my wedding that she had saved. She didn't write anything about these items, but it was nice that she had saved them.

I also found some old letters from various family members. I have decided that letters(anyone remember when we used to write actual letters?) are the best journaling ever! The old letters told so much about what was going on with the writers, and in their own handwriting!

I have so many reasons(excuses) for not journaling; I don't like my own handwriting, I will do it later, I don't want to waste time and paper to just print out one journal at a time, and so on and so on. I have decided that I am going to make a concerted effort to keep a book of some sort and just start writing things as I think of them or as they come up when I am talking to family members. I am also going to at least write down the main points when I am doing a layout, even if I just write in on a piece of paper, tear it out, and put it in with my layout.

If any of you have a great idea to help those of us who are not very good about "putting it in writing" please let me know.

Nancy