By: Eliza Mimski

I am one of those people who keeps a daily journal of sorts. That’s me–I’m 79 now– and I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember. From the moment I wake up in the morning (well, after spending an hour or two hidden beneath the covers while watching dog videos on TikTok) I grab my $3.99 black and white composition book off the nightstand, open it and go to the next clean page and get started.

My basic journal routine, different than most:

First, I center the date on the top line of the right-hand page, and then I number the lines from one to ten, knowing I can add more later.  This first part of the list is very repetitive, things I do every day: writing the name of the current novel I’m working on and how many words I commit to writing that day; reminding myself of my physical therapy exercises (I do these because I suffer from vertigo–at 79, you wouldn’t believe the multitude of ailments I suffer from); reminding myself to read something as it keeps the brain active. After that, I write Walk, as I record my daily mileage, which ranges between a mile and three and a half miles. Yes, I am a walking junkie and never skip a day. I’m like one of those people who works out at a gym, only my gym is the sidewalk. Have you seen those ten flights of stairs in the Sunset District? Yes, I walk up them. And then the rest of the list is devoted to the random things I need to accomplish that day.

Are you bored yet? I can imagine you are, for journals of all kinds are for those who write them, not for the eyes of others, and, I imagine, they are generally bland. Journals are not diaries that hold our secrets, our hidden truths. And for me, my journal helps me to organize my life and I could never express how much satisfaction I get from checking something off my list when a task is completed. It’s my drug! It’s a serotonin high!

Let me just say that I’m careful about what I write down because it means I really have to try and do it–(believe me, I’m a chief procrastinator). So it’s a kind of promise I’m making to myself. Sometimes it happens that I’m unable to complete a task through no fault of my own, like someone I need to talk to being unavailable. In this case, the task ends up on the bottom of the page under COs, or CarryOvers, and hopefully I’ll accomplish it the next day. The things I generally detest doing on my list are making customer service phone calls, but who likes them? No one I’ve ever met. I try really hard to keep my cool and not utter curse words at the robotic voice.

I guess if there was a quasi-interesting part of my daily journal it would have to be what goes on the left-hand side of the page. What I generally need to work on is my lousy thinking because it tends to get me into trouble. I criticize people in my head, especially those who try to get close to me since I learned in my childhood that intimacy can be a dangerous thing. This is also the place where I write down the things that I’m grateful for, forcing myself to be positive. I will write down a person’s name in a kind of hieroglyphics (just in case they should get hold of my journal) and how the relationship is going, what resentments I have against them (I am the resentment queen of all queens and as a Pisces, believe me I can remember verbatim what they said that offended me, what time of day it was and even what they were wearing). I also keep it positive by writing the things I love about them, what I appreciate, trying to train my mind, opening up the nice part of my brain. The part that appreciates. The part that sees the good.

On the bottom of that page I write down singular words I want to live by. Here’s what I wrote today: professionalism (this comes in handy with dealing with the public–I substitute teach during the school year and try my hardest to keep the classroom a happy place and not to get into it with the mischievous ones); courage; acceptance, patience with myself and others; tolerance. These are the things I could definitely improve upon, and writing them down over and over guides me in that direction.

Once I finish writing the left-hand side of the page, I focus on my daily tasks. For example, I’m writing a new novel and I’m one of those writers who don’t follow an outline. Rather, I just sit in front of my google doc and my fingers start tapping the keyboard. Sometimes I say to myself, don’t write that!, and this is when I know what’s about to be written is definitely the right thing. I try to get to my novel as soon as I can because I’m also the queen of all queens when it comes to procrastination, and it’s hard for me to get started. It’s only the customer service calls, if there are any, that exceed my writing.

I know there’s a lot of people out there in the world–millions and maybe billions–who don’t use a journal in any way. Their mind is a box where they keep their list of things that need to get done. That’s just not me. And it’s not so much that I just don’t remember things as much as I feel safe with my journal. Does that sound weird? Safe in the respect that my day is ordered, that I generally know what to do next, and once again that I get to reach that magnificent high when checking off a task, the satisfaction that it’s been completed.

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Eliza is a 79-year-old retired teacher who continues to substitute. She has recently published three novels.