New Year... Recording My Life

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Well... I had planned to post so much sooner than now.  I've sat down to post several times but other things kept interfering.  Even now I really need to get out of here but I just wanted to write a little bit.

I don't make New Year's resolutions but this year I have tried to do a few new things once the holidays were over.  One is that I bought a guided journal and I'm trying to work through it each day.  It took a good bit of searching before I found one that I thought I would like and I'm so happy I took that time.  This one has some wonderful prompts that make me think about things I need to ponder on before I start my day.  It has a few prompts that I don't use so I fill in those areas with other things I want to record.  I'm actually proud of myself for not being so rigid that I feel I have to fill in each area with the dedicated prompt.

I'm also proud of myself that I didn't beat myself up when I missed a day.  I found it right around New Year's but shipping took some time so I just got it last week.  I had only written in it a few days when I had to be at a shoot (I'm a professional photographer) super early so I decided it wasn't worth the stress to scribble something in it before I left just so I could say I did.

I didn't realize until I got it that it has some questions for the end of the day too.  That's a great thing as I can look back over my day for just a moment before I go to sleep and reflect on what happened during the day.  I can go back over emotions I had a hard time processing and try to figure out why.  I can think about where I currently am in the wonderful cycling that bipolar disorder causes.  I can list concerns and worries that are eating up my brainpower with the thought that putting them on paper gets them out of my head so that I can go to sleep.

Eventually, I hope to have enough information from this record to be able to track my moods along with what happened during the day.  When I was first diagnosed with bipolar, I used an app on my phone to do the same thing but it didn't have the detail that a written record will have. 

Along with this, I'm dedicating the time each morning to read some type of recovery information - from an informational book or meditation book about one of my addictions.  I write about what I read.  This keeps me accountable to do the reading as well as the writing.

Not to be too much of a pessimist, but I just hope and pray I can keep this up.  It hasn't even been a full week so it's way too early to say it's going to be a habit.  But I can hope...

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