Welcome to Keeping Records

Today I went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It's a cool movie, though the ending wasn't what I was hoping for. I'm excited to see where this series goes. I would definitely recommend the movie for Harry Potter fans and non-Harry Potter fans alike. It definitely felt like the movie was building up to something bigger in the long run.

Thanksgiving has come and gone (along with Black Friday). The winter holidays are fast approaching, which means Christmas music will be inescapable for the next month in the US. There are tons of holidays between now and the 1st of January. There's also still a lot of work to get done before the new year.

The holidays really tie up the phone lines sometimes.

While I was visiting my dad for Thanksgiving, he gave me one of my grandmother's journals from the 1950s to read. It's a day to day travel journal about their journey from Pennsylvania to Japan. My grandfather worked for Church World Services and was asked to go to Japan for them. I'm not sure of all the details, but this was the first trip of many for my dad's family.

I will admit, reading my grandmother's journals is a little difficult. They are written in cursive and occasionally the pen bleeds through the page.

She does, however keep a very strict log of the day's activities, including when they woke up in the morning and what they ate at each meal. She always includes the location and what the weather is like. I might have picked up on a few of these habits.

This is the first journal of many. I think my dad hopes that someday I'll compile them all into a book to publish. They are fascinating to read. So far I've managed to discover that my grandmother was very worried that the trip would spoil her children rotten.

I keep a personal journal and a travel journal. My current travel journal includes my recent trip to Iceland as well as two other trips I took nearly ten years ago. It's interesting to go back and read some of the things I have written. It seems that I like to include silly things in my travel journal (like what I was listening to on the airplane).

My personal journal is just that, personal. My first journal was from when I was in high school. It mostly contains silly drawings and poetry (really really bad poetry that is very much a product of the 2000s decade). My second journal is a log of my journey through college. There is a third journal floating around somewhere that is incomplete. Who knows if I'll ever find it again (its from a summer between Junior and Senior year of college).

My most recent journal was given to me by a friend for Christmas two years ago. Sadly it's almost completely filled and I'll need to get a new one soon.

I've talked with a few people who have also kept journals and diaries. We all agree that it's nice to write things out. One of my friends reread a journal they started in the early 2000s. They wrote a lot about the changes that were happening in the world and how it was effecting them (especially 9/11).

For a long time even the presidents kept personal journals. Many are held in the Library of Congress to be preserved. Through these personal journals, people are able to catch a glimpse at the day to day lives they and their families lived. It helps add a different perspective to events that were happening at those times, especially since we don't have audio and video recordings for us to view.

I would like to encourage everyone to keep a personal journal. Even in this day of blogs and social media, having something to record your thoughts private thoughts in might be benificial. Sure, nothing on the internet ever really goes away, but there's so much stuff on here that things can get a bit lost. Who knows, someone might really want to use your journals in the future for a book.

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. Until next week.

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