Journal Sharing Time

(Title is meant to be read in a sing-songy voice to evoke excitement)

"Journal Sharing Time" was a little practice I implemented with a very select group of roomates during my schoolling years. We would be sitting around talking/usually laughing and then something would come up that would trigger a past memory or experience...to which I would then make a dash for my Journal and share the wisdom, (aka extreme dorkiness) of my own experience.
I recieved my first "real"(hard cover as opposed to scribbler) journal in 1992 by my lovely Merry Miss teacher, Sister Curle. It was one of those standard red, smallish, journals that you get from the church bookstore. In it I covered the years 1992 - 1997...all in a total of about 25 pages...I wasn't ever a real great journal writer...(though I have always wished to be and secretly covet chad's bookshelf full of journals). At any rate...I get a real kick out of my last entry in my first little red journal and would like to echo some of the same sentiments in this last post of 2008.
My last regular entry was regarding personal progress on May 6, 1997. At the end of this entry in large print and with a new pen you see the words messily scrawled "Go to the Last Page!!!" with an arrow --> pointing in the obvious direction to start flipping through the rest of the otherwise very blank and empty 3/4 of the journal. Finally at the last page I have written, this .....

October 14, 1997

"The past little while I have realized how much I need to change about myself. I was reading Jelly's Journal (I'm the little sister...Im sopposed to do that) and I realized what an awesome person she is.
[I am going to skip over all the amazing things I go on to say about my sister Jewel and how much I admire her....I don't want her to feel on the spot or anything...but Jewel, just know that I said some pretty nice things ---so really, I believe it totally excuses the fact that I was snooping in your journal...right????!].
...As I compared her to me I really started to see myself the way I am now and what I hope to be.
[...skip over some more....talking about jewel stuff again....]
...So I am deciding to turn a whole new leaf...Out with the old and in with the new. I also decided to keep a real journal, not a sissy one like what this seems to me to be. So Im off, Im off to find myself.
wish me luck...
Crystal.
That was the end of that journal and I started a brand new one...a new journal for a new (less sissy) me (naturally!!).
My new journal was a much larger, blue (a much less "sissy" of a color than red) journal and the first entry I have written reads
October 14, 1997
Well , hello!
and that is all you hear from me until March 30, 1998.

...And soo the story goes. A vicious cycle of me seeing the need to make changes in my life...taking a few meager steps...and then ultimately falling back into my all too comfortable sissy ways.
Well, I wish somehow with this blog I could tell you to turn to the last page. That from now on I was going to be a new me...a more graceful, patient, spiritual, intellectual.....and the list goes on of course...me!

This Christmas [apart from the wonderful time spent with family] has been a bit of schmoz...as for the most part I lost Christmas somewhere in our mad dash to renovate our bathroom (and the mess that goes with it), deal with a scammy plumber, learn our own plumbering, have no water in the house for 2 1/2 days (Christmas eve and Christmas day to be two of them), boiling snow to do dishes, and getting sick just in time for new year's eve...you may think that this sounds a little bit like I am whining or complaining...well I am...I have been doing a little too much of that these past few days if you know what I mean...I am reminded of Jeffrey R. Holland's May 2007 talk when he is speaking of pessimistic speaking...
"I have often thought that Nephi’s being bound with cords and beaten by rods must have been more tolerable to him than listening to Laman and Lemuel’s constant murmuring.8 Surely he must have said at least once, “Hit me one more time. I can still hear you.” ....A thought, that although he would never admit it as he is the wonderfully patient one in the family...Jeremy might have had regarding my negativity...
Elder Holland goes on to say..."Yes, life has its problems, and yes, there are negative things to face, but please accept one of Elder Holland’s maxims for living—no misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse.".
Uggh hmm.
Well, with New Years almost here...a sick husband, two sleeping babes and me all alone to reconsider all of my weaknesses in a particularly weak week...I more than ever am wanting that fresh page...or new leaf to turn. More than ever I am wanting to "close the book" so-to-speak on my old sissy-self and be much better. I hope that in 2009 I can make some of these needed changes and keep some of the goals I have been trying to achieve for quite some time now...and I hope that this time, this desire lasts longer than the end of this current post. So here is to fresh starts, and new years... may we all be a little less sissy this year and just a little bit better.
Cheers.
Crystal.