I started keeping a journal a little more than 10 years ago. Journal might not be the best description, though. It began as more of a random log of things that I noticed during downtime when I could pay attention to what other people were doing and saying. They were strangers in a coffeeshop or a diner. People chatting in a theater before the film started. Men at a Hopkinsville garage waiting to have new tires put on a car or truck. Hikers coming off the Appalachian Trail in a small town in Virginia where I spent a couple of weeks one autumn. Twenty-somethings throwing darts in a North Carolina brewery.
Writing down what other people were doing was much more interesting to me than a review of my day or what I was thinking of some event in my own life.
It was reporter-style journaling. Eyes on the world for no reason other than capturing a moment in time.
I encouraged the habit by buying Moleskine notebooks. My grandmother would have called them “dear,” which was her way of saying too expensive. They flip at the top like a reporter’s notebook but they are smaller, which meant I could put one in my pocket or a purse no matter where I was going. And since they were kind of pricey, I knew I wouldn’t treat them like a notepad for making grocery lists. They had to count for something. I had to fill them with the world — or at least my version of it.
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Recently I graduated to a larger but less expensive version of a Moleskine. It won’t fit in my pocket. But it accommodates a morning ritual that I decided to start on New Year’s Eve at the kitchen table.
This one is more like a traditional journal.
I changed things up because I decided I ought to take a few minutes every morning and write down at least one thing for which I am grateful. After a few years of coronavirus and general chaos, I felt like I needed to push back at some of the dreariness.
Ten years ago, this was not the kind of thing that would have interested me. If someone had suggested in 2013 that I should jot down some notes of gratitude, I would have rolled my eyes. Snarky me would have said, “What, did Oprah recommend that %&$#@?”
But here we are.
One month into this daily ritual, I can see that I’ve made a note of something almost every day. I try not to overthink it. I don’t judge what I’m thinking and I don’t attempt to make it grand. I am grateful for such a range of things — from a strong cup of coffee to a chance encounter with a stranger.
The list so far, in random order, includes: good shoes, a clean car, being married to my opposite, my church, cornbread, black-eyed peas, my new hat, Hoptown Chronicle donors, melatonin, dinner with friends, mild weather, living in a town where traffic is never a problem, the thermos my daughter gave me 10 years ago, phone talks in the car, emails from readers (most of them), oranges, Instagram photos from a small village in New York, second chances, third places, and a good night’s sleep.
There are 11 more months to go in my “year of gratitudes” journal. Will I be weary of this by the end of the year? I could be. Or will it will be the first thing that I want to mark down every morning? I’m just curious enough to find out.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
