Blank Pages

A few years ago I decided to start a journal. Like most people, I think I have an interesting life and I’m sure my close friends would agree. I thought I should record my failures and triumphs, love and loss (which I could just write a book on itself) and things I’ve learned from life. My thought was that I could reflect on my life and when I’m old I could publish them. I guess we all think our lives could be made into a book or movie.

So I downloaded to my phone this App called” Day One” to journal here I can type in my journal entries-being as though I’m too lazy to hand write. One of the great features of this app is that you can also take pictures and attach them to your journal entries. The demo for the App shows a picture of a woman picking fruit at a farmers market with her journal entry below the picture saying: ”Bought some fruit at the farmers market what a beautiful day”. I won’t be buying fruit anytime soon (I don’t eat fruit..yeah I know) and I won’t be writing about how beautiful the day is…what is this Mr. Rogers neighborhood? But I could take pictures of the things around me when I’m out exploring and write about daily life experiences.

Over the next couple of months, I started getting alerts from “Day One” reminding me: “It’s time to write in your journal” which I ignored most of the time. Until one day I opened the app and I saw there were numerous blank pages. I’m not going to lie that shit forced me to self-evaluate. I was forced to reconcile the past few years and, as a result, I came to the conclusion that I haven’t really done much with my life lately. Now I wasn’t expecting to open the app and see journal entries of me hanging out every night or going away every weekend but damn I should have had a lot more pages filled.

I took an inventory of my life. First I had to address why I was stuck in the same routine of work- home-sleep on the weekends. I also remembered all the traveling and exploring I did in the military-those were some of the happiest times of my life. I thought about LIFE in general. I am the student and the world is my teacher. Sitting at home watching television or reading a magazine about places to see and cool things do was not how I wanted to spend my free time. Instead, I could get up off the couch head downtown and see an art exhibit at my local museum or hop on a flight to explore the Incan ruins in Peru. The choices were endless!

It’s very easy to get stuck in our daily routines but ask yourself: Is my life meant to be spent in this one place?
This planet is vast. There are some unbelievable places and art to see, incredible things to experience, and wonderful things to learn.
The world is waiting for you to discover it.

So how do you plan on filling your blank pages?