Kevin Over the weekend, there was an observance called “Write Down Your Story Day.” Since I will rarely (if ever!) post on a weekend, let’s make today’s post about writing down your story instead.
I’m a firm believer that everyone has a story to tell, and that writing it down is an act of self-care. I know you have a story to tell. Maybe you don’t feel like you do, but it’s not always obvious to us. Last weekend was Write Down Your Story Day, so show of hands: did you do anything special for it?
I did. Well, sort of. There’s this little thing I’ve been working on in what little free time I have among my day job, this, and packing for the move while we’re waiting for the all-clear to start moving to the new house.
I’ve been writing down the story of my life while I lived in this house. I came up with the idea a few years ago, and somehow it occurred to me again after we got the notice to move.
I hammered out the outline in my scratch notebook, which is that five-subject Ed Hardy-themed Lisa Frank notebook on the far left. I got it back in college, but somehow misplaced it between then and two months ago when I found it.
I had a cheap notebook from the dollar store, and felt like it would be a great way to use it up. Nothing fancy or special, just my blue pen, and the content as it comes to me.
As of this posting, I’m 20 pages into this little mini project. I have nothing due for my day job until Friday, but I got most of what’s due then done earlier today.
I hope to have the whole thing done by the time we finish moving to the new house. I haven’t decided whether I’ll keep it and add it to my box of old notebooks for the sake of posterity, or hide it somewhere and leave it behind for someone to find years after the fact. I’ve found quite a few hiding places over the years here, some I’ve used with nobody the wiser in the 14-15 years it’s been since we moved here.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written down my story. At one point during my freshman year of high school, I saw something in an issue of either Teen or Jump (it was a magazine that lasted for like a nanosecond back in the late 90s to the very early 2000s) that said to write out your life story, a page at a time, so that by the time summer ends and school starts back up again, you’ll have like a hundred pages or whatever.
I know I still have it knocking around here somewhere. I’ll probably find it after the move, and report back on that one.
Anyways, that’s how I came up with the idea to do it the first time around. I ended up filling an entire notebook in a surprisingly short amount of time. It was something I did when I ran out of steam for a fiction story I was writing at the time. Most of that story ended up being written in my head, but I ended up with roughly 150 handwritten pages worth of stuff with that project.
But who says Write Down Your Story Day has to be limited to your life story, anyway? Maybe you have a story character that’s been haunting you for awhile. Maybe there’s a story scene you’ve been thinking about off and on.
Maybe today could be the day you write it down, and take it somewhere. Or maybe it could be something to do on a rainy day like today was here in my neck of the woods.
Over to you, readers: have you written down your story? Did you do it on the day of the observance, or will you do it some other time? What have you used to write down your story? Drop it like it’s hot below, and let’s talk!
