DAILY NOTEBOOK DOCUMENTATIONS  SOL~2024#3/31

Sunday, March 3, 2024, 8:55 am

35 degrees, windy as heck; moon – 50% 

National Simplify your Life Day

National Soup it Forward Day

National I Want You to be Happy Day

WOTD: Connive – to secretly cooperate of conspire

NYT Connections Puzzle: 2/4 (a tricky BELLY____)

Weight – NYB

Sitting on the porch – move to sanctuary when cold

WBR: 7

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These are the ritualized documentations of my early morning  notebook entries. Let me tell you about them:

Dates and time – important. . . It shows evidence that I showed up that day, evidence of keeping the appointment with notebook – with my “self”. And that I was alive on this date in time.

Weather? Why would I document this? Because it is a factor in my well-being trends over time. Many gray days correlate with my emotional well-being. This awareness means that sometimes necessary radical interventions may be necessary to sustain my physical, emotional and mental well-being. When the sun comes out – there is an uptick in happiness, productivity and number of steps I’m able to produce. On those gray days, I increase Vitamin D, connections to people I love or am sure to take more steps.

Moon? Yes – this, too. There always seems to be a slump season when the moon has whittled away to nothing, and a bit of a frenzy when the full moon bursts in its brilliance. Do you not notice this? Pseudo science or not – it does not matter to me – my notebook does not lie.

Location – Where am I writing from? The location? There are many places to write from – my comfy writing chair by the fireplace, my sanctuary up above the garage, the front porch. Each writing location impacts the content that seeps into my notebook. I’ve experimented with these over time. The conclusion? It matters. Some places are perfect conditions for flow – others, nothing but fluffery.

The National Days Calendar alerts me to the celebrations of the day. While many days seem to drone on, this calendar alerts me to the realization that there is much to celebrate. Picking something that resonates and attending to that seems to bring a bit of happiness and diversion from the minutiae of the day. And, my husband loves a “Chocolate chip Cookie Day” or “National Card Playing Day”.

Word of the Day – Oh, how I love words. If there is any attempt to learn words that have not found their way into my speaking and writing vocabulary, I will seek them out. These words sneak their way into my entries, if not even becoming the focal point of the day. As my husband irons his pants for work, I often shout the WOTD to him as he irons away. We conversate about these words and I can feel our smartness growing – iron sharpens iron.

Weight – some days I weigh myself if I am feeling hopeful, other days it’s NOYB (None of Your Business and my body cries to pick another day). A weigh in keeps me honest and forces me to attend to when things get carried away.

WBR – This is my overall Well Being Rating on a scale of 1-10. Ultimately, my notebook is a tool for monitoring who I am, how I am and what factors contribute to living a life well lived. If my WBR is scores below 5, there are serious considerations of which need to be addressed. If I’m score is high, my documentations specify the contributions to this high score in an effort to replicate it when I forget where I am in my days. This rating score is a composite score of my self-scan of my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being (a self-scan).

NYT Connection Puzzle – while I do not always document this in my daily notebook entries, sometimes it finds a way there. When I top off my coffee cup, the phone comes with me and I attempt the NYT Daily Connections Puzzle – because its good for the brain, you know. Sometimes, I document my brilliance and other days, I am sure to record the ridiculousness of the categories – like how just a few days ago one category was animals spelled backwards – REALLY? Who’s going to figure that out? But, I add it to my categories of patterns: Words Spelled Backwards. My husband assures me that these puzzles push me out of my box when I complain.

There is a word for people that feel the need to document the existence of their time on earth, or “the need to write”. Some call it “hypergraphia”. 

I consider it simply: RESEARCH.

We are students of ourselves. If we are meant to live on this earth to the fullest of our potentials, should we not be attentive to the factors that contribute to those potentials? Some humans can carry onward by simply waking up, having coffee, ironing their clothes and commuting to work just willy-nillying through through their days. For some reason, I’ve conditioned myself to pay attention to the smallish details that may or may not make or break a day. 

There are things I often fail to mention in my notebook – the number of quality sleep hours I’ve had, which usually I end up writing about in my entry if it rates on the high or low end. The state of well-being of my plants that I water in my kitchen window, the flavor of my morning coffee, the mood of my husband, how busy the schedule of my day looks. Each of these find it’s way into the daily entry depending on its need to be heard. Or maybe I’ll document the foods I’ve eaten the day before, or the day of, if I’m writing at the end of the day – of which I am not. Sometimes vitamins, supplements or number of steps I’ve accomplished get recorded, too. So much influences how the day will unfold.

All of it is worthy content for the notebook of our living . . .

in our experiment of living here on Planet Earth School.

I’m doing the 31 Day March Slice of Life over at Two Writing Teachers along with many other fabulous teacher-writers and others who just wish to challenge themselves to 31 days of writing and sharing with the world. If you’d like to read a few lovely posts from others, head over to today’s entries!