Tag Archives: New Year

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Inlandia Literary Journeys Column

Inlandia Literary Journeys columns typically appear in four of the Southern California Newsgroup’s newspapers: The Inland Valley Bulletin, The Press Enterprise, The Redlands Daily Facts, and The Sun. I picked up three of those papers today, but it was raining too much for me to want to drive over to Ontario to pick up a copy of The Inland Valley Bulletin.

I wrote thirty-one ideas for journaling over the past month in preparation for this column’s publication. I still have more ideas that I will share later, but my streak of posts on journaling ideas will cease for now.

Today I have to make some tough decisions about which of those ideas I will actively pursue for myself this year.

Scout has approved my selections for 2023.

I’m going to continue occasionally to record memories of my parents in my grief turned relishing journals (blue for my mom and red for my dad). I will continue to use my black gratitude journal. I’m going to write in response to the pre-written prompts in My Father’s Life journal that my son gave me at least once a week. I’m going to start a nursery rhyme journal in the marble covered book that I have repurposed by slicing out the few pages I had started in it twenty-five years ago. I’m going to use one of the blue mini journals I got from my wife for a sentence journal and the other for my Title My Day journal. I’m going to keep going with my encourager’s journal online. I’d like to keep up with the comic journal that I started, but only occasionally.

Although I am chiding myself about only having so much time, I just overheard my wife talking to her mother about some other new journals that she has bought me for my birthday, so will see what happens.

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Eleven Months Have Passed

I was struck with disbelief today by a post today of a photo of Bernie Sanders in his iconic large mittens at Joseph Biden’s inauguration. The caption queried, “Can you believe that this was 11 months ago?” I couldn’t. I searched up the date of Biden’s inauguration and found myself still in disbelief that his inauguration was less than a year ago.

Amanda Gorman took center stage on that Inauguration Day in her golden coat as she read her poem “The Hill We Climb.” Today I began reading her new collection of poems Call Us What We Carry. Her poems are helping me to reflect on this seemingly long year and the disruption that the Covid pandemic has caused in our lives.

I will say more of Gorman’s book when I finish.