Journal

Upon cleaning the yurt today (we have a yurt), I found six or seven volumes of my journals, writings I’ve done over the years. How about this…I opened the first one to 10 years and two days ago… June 25, 2004. So I moved through the pages two entries to 10 years exactly today, June 27, 2004. Ten years ago today I ran an Olympic distance triathlon in Sunriver, Oregon. My writing detailing the event was really pretty good…good details about the hurt, the exhilaration, the cramps, the smell of pine, the cold mountain water, the transitions between swim and bike, bike and run…aahhhhh, the beer gardens at the end. Oh my God…what happened to me in 10 years? Could I possibly do another? Biking? No problem. Swimming? Just need the reps. The problem is the running…man, I’ve tried over the years, and it just kills my hips and knees. But I used to look at those old geezers running with me and they were a hell of a lot older than I am now, and they were cooking. One thing at a time.

What is of more importance probably is the fact that I have this record in journals of nearly every day of mine over the last 15 years or so. Probably in those years, I’ve missed fewer than seven days of writing. I have to write, HAVE TO WRITE, every morning upon arising. To miss that would be like skipping breath for a day. I rarely, rarely read back through what I’ve written. Most of them contain the mundane, the trivial, the bizarre at times…but now and then, a real nugget of good writing. I’m not going to share any of that with you now, but I guess it’s an insight into who I am. One could do less than write a page or three in a journal every morning