My fingers were itchy.
Not just that day a few days ago. No, it was on and off again all fall.
No, not because they were dry or any other medical condition.
Nope. They wanted to do something.
I used to journal, almost every day, for several years. I filled several Moleskine or Leuchtterm hardback notebooks. It wasn’t just words. There were pictures, newspaper clippings, drawings, copies of my watercolours, and all sorts of things. More like a scrapbook than anything else.
And then I stopped. Not sure why, but I did.
But last fall, I started to get the itch to start doing it again. I’m not entirely sure why, I just did. Maybe I had the bandwidth again after a busy 18 months. Maybe it was Saturn getting ready to move out of Pisces for the first time in three years.
But I kept putting off the start date. “Oh, next week is the first of the month, I’ll do it then”. (Daniel Pink, one of my favourite authors, has written about the power of “temporal landmarks” like the first of a month but…)
It didn’t happen. Not in November. Not in December.
And then on January 1st, the Globe & Mail published an article by Gayle McDonald about people who journaled, or kept diaries.
She wrote “Each person told me it reduces stress, helps manage anxiety and process difficult emotions, sharpens self-awareness, clarifies thinking and builds confidence.”
I said “That’s the universe telling me to get off my butt and start doing it again.”
I filled up som
e of my fountain pens and on the first Sunday of the New Year, I started writing again and have done it nearly every day since. It’s fun, even when it’s not. Definitely a stress buster, and I do take time to reflect on the day and what’s going on in my life and the world around me. (That’s my current journal and some of fountain pens over there on the left).
So why am I telling you this?
Have you ever had that “finger itch” feeling? (or something similar)?
I’d love to hear about it!
(And if it involves getting your bookkeeping and accounting sorted — I can help with that! That’s what I do, you know. I am, after all, the bowtie-wearing, fountainpen-wielding online CPA and I specialize in working with Canadian coaches, consultants, and creatives, who’d rather have a root canal than do their books. (or not have itchy fingers about them)).
PS All the em dashes in this were inserted by me. No AI. But that’s a conversation for another day.
PPS Know what else I dug out of the basement? All of my watercolour stuff. That’s the next thing to dig back into and stop itchy-finger syndrome.
