New Year, New Blog Project

Photo taken by me, Chelsea Market, Manhattan

Confession time: I really haven't been in the mood to write recently. I like the idea of writing every day but when it comes down to it lately, I just keep getting sidetracked by far more important things to do. Things such as: avoiding writing. Basically I'm swamped. But here's the thing - one of my New Years goals is to write at least one meaningful blog post per week. But here's the other thing - another of my New Years goals is to live more simply. What to do?

I hava you answer! (That will look ridiculous unless you're familiar with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you're not, you should be.)

The answer is a project I found on Pinterest (which is a black hole of an activity that falls under the category of avoiding writing and that I'd highly recommend!) called 5 Year Journal. It was created by Tami Taylor and featured on the scrap-booking website Get It Scrapped. While I have NO patience for traditional scrap-booking (who knows why my brain says knitting tiny hats with delicate yarn is no problem and cutting out paper and photos is too much work?), I do love the idea of keeping a record of real daily life - for myself and for future generations. I actually think of this blog as a sort of scrapbook - just without the scissors and glue and tape and glitter and whatnot. And really, if you look at this project, it doesn't have to be about scrap-booking at all.

The 5 Year Journal is, essentially, a list of 365 prompts to follow - one question per day. You can write a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or an essay - the idea is to have some record of your day, every day for a year and then start over next year with the same questions. After five years you'll be able to not only look back at the goings-on of years past, you can compare and contrast the entries for the same day year to year and see how time changes your answers to the same questions.

I don't know if I'll do this for five years, but I am intrigued by the idea of having a ready-made prompt every single day to get me started. Knowing that some days, when I'm up for it, I'll write a lot. But other days, when I don't feel like even looking at my Mac (Her name is Mrs. Mackey, by the way - and she is married to Mr. Mackey - Randy's Mac. I know - we rocked it coming up with creative names.) I can answer a question in as little as a word or sentence and instantly have a record for the day.

My plan is to try and do the 5 Year Journal every day. Some days the simple prompt answer will be all I blog. Some days I'll use the prompt as a jumping off point for a more in-depth blog entry that highlights something I would have written about anyway. Sometimes I may tweak a prompt if I feel that it would be more suited to my needs.  Also - I'll be perfectly honest right from the get-go: I will most likely not physically post every day. I may miss a few days or a week and write all those posts at once, back-dating them to the appropriate day. Also, there probably won't be photos for every entry. Its not ideal, but life is busy, and also its my blog and I can do what I want. :)

With no further ado......Let the 5 Year Journal begin!

January 1: What is your number one goal?
See yesterday's post. I think that will suffice as my answer for this prompt!

I will do today's prompt in a separate post. Two posts in one day! Might be a record for me. :)