One Sentence a Day

In November 2013 I was perusing a cute boutique-type store in the mall, in search of a cute clutch for my best friend's wedding, when I came across this book:

A sentence a day. What an interesting idea. In my opinion it cost too much for a fairly simple notebook, so I took a picture so I wouldn't forget the idea and moved on with my life.
(And never actually found that clutch.)

At my friend's rehearsal dinner, I was talking to her mom about being the mom of a baby and how busy it is. She told me that she had a planner (or maybe it was a calendar, I can't remember) that she would use to write something cute the kids did that day. She would just use a few keywords like, "scared of water hose in the dark" and that was enough to help her remember the story that went along with it.

We talked about how little time there is when being a mother of a young thing and how you want to remember every little moment but by the end of the day you're way to tired to keep up with a journal. Hence her planner.

That reminded me of the sentence a day book. When I had originally seen it, I was thinking of writing a sentence a day in a creative writing stand point, which would still be fantastic. But what if I kept a journal that was just a sentence a day. How hard could that be?

So when January 1, 2014 rolled around, I found an empty journal in one of my bookshelves and wrote a sentence to sum up the day. Just one.

And so it went for 365 days I wrote at least one sentence a day.

Now, I'll be honest with you. Some days I wrote more than one sentence. Sometimes I went a week without writing but I always went back and wrote in something for that day to the best of my memory.

Some sentences summed up the simple activities I did. Some only talked about how in love I was with my baby girl. I think one may have said, "Today sucked." and that's all.

But, I can look back at any day of 2014 and know what was going on that day and all it took was one simple sentence a day.

So as you're starting your New Year resolutions (and giving up on them), I want to challenge you to try writing one sentence a day to remember your year by. Try not to write more than 5 sentences. The shorter you keep it, the easier it will be to keep the habit. If you're like me, after a month you'll find yourself looking back through the days and being somewhat excited.

Just keep your notebook on your nightstand or next to your bed somewhere and do it right before you go to bed. Easy peasy.

You can write one sentence a day, right?