By Heidi Weaver
I’ve understood my whole life that there are many wellness benefits to writing in a journal. Self-reflection, stress relief, and recording good ideas are a few that come to mind. I realized these benefits in my teen and early adult years, when I regularly poured my deepest (and not so deep) thoughts out in page after page of my diary. But as my obligations increased over the years with working full time and a busy family life, I started to see journaling every evening as yet another pressure-filled, time-consuming chore rather than a healing opportunity, and abandoned the practice.
Fast forward to Christmas, 2019. My daughter gifted me a beautiful 2020 Blue Sky Day Planner from Target. I had been admiring other people’s planners and loved my present, but I wondered to myself whether I would really use it given that I usually track all my appointments in Outlook or my phone. Well, late 2019 turned into early 2020, which as we all know soon took a turn for the scary and increasingly bizarre.
As the days ticked by and reality ticked away, I felt like I needed to capture some of my weird new experiences in writing, for fear that future me would otherwise never believe what went down. My new day planner, untouched since Christmas, stared at me from my nightstand, and suddenly its utility became clear. I would use it as a journal to jot down some of my spiraling feelings and the overall craziness of the world. As a bonus, the format of the planner, with its small sections dedicated to each day, dictated that my entries be brief. Arduous task be gone!
And so last March, as everyone’s 2020 plans began to evaporate, I began to write concise journal entries in my day planner. What follows is a small sample of some of the strangest blurbs I wrote — some reflective, others mundane, all of it unplanned:
3/16: I used to fantasize about staying in bed all day and conducting all of my business from a laptop. (Turns out it was possible)
3/21: Bought a 32-ounce Bloody Mary to-go from Small Bar. (RIP Small Bar)
3/31: Morning hot tub. (That was a Tuesday!)
4/5: They’re saying this will be a hard week. Comparing it to Pearl Harbor…
4/18: Visited Mom and Dad through a screen door and gave them face masks to wear during early senior hours at the supermarket.
4/20: Announcement that some parks will reopen for passive activities!!!!!!!!!!. Too soon?
4/21: Didn’t get dressed, brush my teeth, or go outside at all today.
4/24: 16th wedding anniversary. Stayed home, but B got discount tickets to go to Hawaii at the end of June! (Nope)
4/26: Quarantine Fatigue – BIG TIME (Hah)
4/27: The beaches are open! But only for water activities and exercising. (What?!)
4/11: Happy to have a home and to be healthy.
5/4: Will it ever end?
5/5: D isn’t doing his schoolwork.
5/6: Went outside to look at the moon, low, full and bright in the sky. The evening air smelled of roses and jasmine.
5/17: The kids were supposed to be heading to class field trips to Catalina and Yosemite today. (Canceled)
6/7: Work really does take up all my time during the day.
5/21: We went to a restaurant!
5/24: Feeling normaler (sic) but talk to me in 3 weeks.
5/26: Work work work work work work.
5/27: Sat in my kitchen chair and worked.
5/31: Enjoyed a kick-ass porch concert from a lawn chair out in the middle of the street.
6/1: Please be better, June, please! / Only one officer has been charged with the murder of George Floyd.
6/4: M’s 8th grade graduation lawn sign arrived today! Trying to figure out how to decorate our car for the big day.
6/5: Worked A LOT today. Am I becoming a workaholic?
6/14: Workplace discrimination protections extended to LGBTQAI+ by SCOTUS. Victorious DACA ruling too.
6/15: D is playing video games with his friends for hours on end. Oh well, at least they’re socializing.
6/18: Slept until 10. (That was a Thursday)
6/24: Talked about “Karens” during Zoom happy hour tonight with my college girlfriends. Kids think it’s funny to call me that. It’s not.
6/25: Tons of people walking around Little Italy tonight without masks. Had to get out of there.
6/29: Bars are closing again unless they sell food. NOT GOOD.
7/4: Happy 4th. Not going ANYWHERE.
7/8: Tik Tok ban?
7/12: Closing it all down again- malls, gyms, salons, movie theaters… Yep we’re the laughing stock of the world. The quarantine stamped out NOTHING. Worse than ever.
7/13: Welp it’s official. Work will be on-line in the fall. But more importantly so will San Diego Unified School District. What about the kids’ schools? Who knows…
7/18: First time waiting in line to go to Sprouts.
7/20: Why am I documenting? This is just normal life now.
7/21: M almost missed her virtual bass guitar lesson this afternoon because she was making banana pancakes. (That was a Wednesday afternoon)
:7/31 Trump wants to delay the election!
8/3: Outdoor dining parklets popping up ALL OVER and they look crazy.
8/6: Yay Ricky (my dog) got to make an appearance on today’s Zoom staff meeting.
8/7: Got hair cut and colored in living room. And nails done on the sidewalk in front of the nail salon. Quite the operation.
8/10: So little of the year is left…
8/13: Halo lights are awesome.
8/17: Not ready for Monday.
8/21: Watching Normal People. Again.
8/24: Last week of “summer.”
8/31: First day of 7th and 9th grade. On Zoom.
9/13: Work will probably stay virtual in the spring.
I don’t think enough time has passed yet for me to read my little entries with the kind of disbelief they might eventually inspire. I do know that when I read them now, it’s with overwhelming gratitude, knowing that things could have been (and were/are) much worse for a lot of people. I also know that writing them down made me feel better and reminded me of all the wellness benefits of journaling. So I’m glad I put my day planner to good use as a journal in 2020. Because in a year when it was impossible to plan anything and life as we knew it spun out of control, it gave me a space to try to get a handle on the unplanned and to experience some much-needed wellness.