Calendar Pages

When I was a child, I remember looking forward to the end of the year because that was when I got to choose a new calendar to hang on my wall. I usually got one for Christmas. There was always such a beautiful selection - I think I usually chose one that had cats in it. Once I got my calendar I would write in all the squares I could, scribbling information like birthdays, appointments, an evening out with friends.

I don't do this much anymore. While I still see plenty of wall calendars in stores, palm pilots, iPods, cell phones and who knows what else seem to have taken over as the preferred form for recording these little notes and reminders. Recently, I picked up a free calendar from our local library. It's beautiful - full color, with photos of happy children and excellent book suggestions. I then noticed all the blank white squares staring back at me and I've decided that I need to fill them in. So here's my plan: I'm going to start doing what my husband did with his calendars starting in the tenth grade.

Hubby has a collection of wall calendars that I've always admired. At the end of each day, in one simple sentence, he would write in each square the most significant thing that happened to him that day. I found this fascinating, and really quite interesting to read even if the event itself wasn't necessarily exciitng. It's like a mini chronology of his life. Today, as I was pondering this further I realized that what he was doing was kind of like an early version of Twitter. Unlike Twitter however, which tends to get slightly overwhelming, this provides a much more sentimental and personal record of these thoughts. And although it's possible to read through all your past "tweets", to me it's more satisfying to flip through the tangible calendar pages. It's kind of like reading an actual book versus reading it on the computer (at least for me.)

I mentioned this to Hubby today, and he said he originally got the idea for the calendar pages from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. Gotta put that one on the reading list. And start writing in my calendar each day. I think it will be nice to get back to basics with paper and pen, don't you think?