Greetings from the Arctic Circle, actually Pennsylvania, where I am struggling to get a running start on 2024. I had all my good intentions, and I am chasing them, but there are too many trails off to the side, and I have to go down each one to the point that if I had to say what I’ve accomplished so far this year, I would have to respond, “Er….um….” Yeah.

For example, the one thing that I am going to accomplish this year, as long as I am alive and breathing, is to finish my Storyworth Memoir, the subscription of which my daughter bought for me either in 2021 or 2022. It’s a bit fuzzy how long that I’ve been working on this tome. In fact, the good people at Storyworth stopped asking me questions about my life a long time ago. “Who was your hero growing up?” and many other questions have gone unanswered. Several months ago, well maybe it was last year, come to think, I sent the Storyworth people an email inquiry as to whether they would still publish my book once I finished, since it’s been a long time since I started. “Yes,” they responded, so I might have promised them that I’d get it done by a self-imposed dead-line, a dead-line which has passed me by, I assure you.

The problem is that I get sidetracked very easily. For instance, this afternoon I was going to write about my life in the 80’s and specifically about my foreign-studies abroad experience in Strasbourg, France. I kept an extensive journal about the experience, so I wanted to refresh my memory by reading my journal before I started writing about that period of my life.  First, I had to find the journal. That’s the problem. I went up to my attic, a place which I have written about before. Alas, the attic is no more organized, reamed out, tote-a-fied than it was the last time I wrote about it. I did not find my French journal there, but I did find the ivory high heels that I wore for my wedding thirty-five years ago. Possibly I might bring myself to donate them to the Salvation Army. They are still pretty…only worn once. My feet have somewhat flattened out since that bright day, and maybe someone else might want them. Actually, I just found one shoe, so I will have to find the other one up there in that hellscape before I can give them to anyone. My attic=ugh.

But for today the attic was not my objective. So, I reminded myself of my objective and started looking for my journal in the back of my clothes closet, where I have stashed some other journals. (I have kept a journal pretty faithfully since I was a child, sometimes writing every day, sometimes once a month, and I have assorted journals here-there-and-everywhere around the house.) I did not find my journal from France in the back of my closet, but guess what else I found? 

I found the Christmas candy that I had stashed there, planning to put it on the dining room table on Christmas morning. I had forgotten it. There it all was hiding out in the back of my closet, and the buttercrunch chocolates were calling my name. I ignored them for a minute because another goal for 2024 that was inspired by a book I just finished, Fat Mom on a Mountain, is to be almost as fit as the author, Kriste O’Brien, was when she reached her goal of summiting Half Dome in Yosemite National Park after months of preparation.    

By this point of my own quest, I was feeling weak in body and spirit. Recently I’ve also been listening to Jason Seib’s podcasts about how you should embrace your discomfort and ignore the comfort zone of procrastination and eating chocolates in order to become one of the very few (5%) of the self-disciplined souls who conquer the bullies in their head and take freezing ice baths, run ultramarathons and write their Storyworth memoirs in the allotted timeframe. After about a minute of weakly mind-wrestling the bully within, the chocolates(s) won out, I’m afraid. I had one (ok several) and they were delicious.

Here is what I would like to tell you now: that as I’ve been writing this essay, I glanced up at my bookshelves across the room and discovered my French journal there, sandwiched between an old Methodist Hymnal (I did not steal it; they were giving them away) and The Official U.S. Army Survival Handbook. I did walk over to the bookshelves, but unfortunately, I did not discover the journal that I kept while I was a student in France.  What I did find was a little, old, brown, 5-year diary with a clasp but no key. Thankfully it was unlocked. My very first diary. Of course, I had to start reading it.  “Jan 1, 1972- Today Daddy suddenly had a spurt of energy and before I knew it, I was helping clean out Mommy and Daddy’s room.”  

And now the afternoon has disappeared like a startled chickadee, and I have things to do before I sleep, so I will leave you, dear reader, until the next time when I hope that I will be able to tell you that I found my journal that I wrote as a Penn State student when I was far, far from home, that I  captured some insights into my young-adult mind and finished writing about the decade of the 80’s, and that I have pushed onward towards my goal of finishing my memoir during this year, 2024.

I just hope I don’t keep getting side-tracked.  

Thank you for reading this, and Peace to you in 2024!