save the date

Days go by. Like a hot breath on a cold window, they are here and then gone before you know it. We move through them, doing the motions on repeat. Sometimes there are undeniable, memorable moments in those days that get etched in our minds that we remember “that day” over the others. Something that makes us smile or laugh so hard that we know we will remember that day or that moment for the rest of our lives. We take pictures of the big days to keep them forever. Birthdays, holidays, big moments.

But what about those other days? The other days without those moments to shake our minds and stamp “that day” on our memory? There are thousands upon thousands of those days. I’m 40. That’s almost 15,000 days. How many of those 15,000 days do I really remember? Those days, without the pictures or notable moments just get lost. Sands through the hourglass. Falling to the bottom and pilling up. All those days. Just gone.

It’s a depressing thought. To lose all those days when you KNOW moments did happen. They just weren’t big enough or you didn’t take a picture to capture them. You lose so much of your life to unmemory. And that makes life seem short. It seems like it flies by and then you look back and think, what the hell happened to that year? Where did my life go? What did I do?

I found a way to keep those days…. if not the days, at least moments within them. For the past year, I’ve been capturing those days by writing down little moments. Sometimes they are really funny things the kids say, sweet moments I don’t want to forget, or even times I get angry or hurt. I write them down. It’s no more than 4 sentences at best, sometimes way less. The grammar is poor and there’s usually no punctuation. I log the date and then quickly describe the memory, trying to capture any sights/smells/sounds that happened if possible because those will bring me right back to that point in time when that memory happened. What gets logged? I just ask myself, if I had to tell a story about THIS day, what would that story be? If this day was all I had, what’s the story in it?

I didn’t come up with this myself. I read a book in 2021 called “Storyworthy.” It’s about how to orally tell a good story. It might sound boring…. but it’s not. It altered how I write (mostly) and it gave me this gift of logging the stories of my day. In the book, the author talks about this exercise of capturing each day. Doing this exercise every day makes you pay more attention to your life as it happens because you are looking for these moments now. The author calls it “Homework for Life.”

I knew immediately I wanted to do it. I had been capturing some of my days anyways through this blog. But I hadn’t been capturing ALL of them. Most were lost in that hourglass if the moments weren’t big enough.

My Homework for Life gave me almost a full year of days that weren’t lost, but I did miss all of November and December. The holidays distracted me, I guess. Those months are gone, and it bothers me. I have some days captured because of the blog and the big events of the holidays. But otherwise, they are just gone. Two whole months just lost.

I’m going into this year with a promise to myself that I won’t lose that many days in 2023. It takes minutes to log a moment that will keep a day. I’m sharing this practice to hopefully inspire others to do the same. It helps slow time and give you days back. It helps you look at your life every day…. trying to find the stories. Maybe take a look at the book too? Listen to it if you don’t have time or inclination to read it. I have been married to Audible since Evie was born because reading is a pleasure I just don’t give myself time for anymore. You don’t have to be a writer to enjoy the book. Everyone should be able to tell a good story.

It’s a highly undervalued life skill.

Some of my logs from last year:

1/27 – eating family dinner and Scarlett says she has a superpower where she can see people looking at her through the corner of her eyes. Vince laughs and says that’s your peripheral vision.

2/10-Scarlett flipping out about her missing schoolwork. I worked for two hours with her to get some of it done. So frustrating. But then later that night I’m sitting in the hot tub and I see through the sliding glass door Vince come in and give her a big hug. I see Scarlett smile into his stomach. Just appreciative about how patient he’s become and how blessed we are.

2/16- in Target parking lot, gray skies. Getting into car and my shoe falls off. I say “Ooo I’m like Cinderella”. I get out of the car to grab my shoe and I slip on the wet leaves and fall flat on the ground

3/9 – Gianna checking Evie’s diaper and getting poop on her fingernail while we were in the car getting stuck in the car line.

3/16- walking in the morning with Evie as she waves high to the big truck with the diggers and seeing the rays of sun filter through the clouds in the sky it looks like heaven.

5/31 – me being right about Vince being able to fit everything in the cars while moving to St Pete.

8/3- laying on the driveway watching the sunset with G. Picking shapes out of clouds, counting raindrops on bodies as they fell from the sky. Did one hit all our fingers?

9/13 – Vince and Evie looking out her window at night for bed. Their reflections in the window for looking for birds reminding me of the night he stayed up with Gianna to watch for Santa as I got the gifts ready.