When I was a teenager, I wrote in my journal every morning. I woke up at 5 am, turned the heat up and sat on the floor by the heater vent. The warm air would fill the blanket that I had brought from upstairs. Every morning I took a warm air bath and it was delicious. This heater vent was positioned in such a manner that I could lean my back on the kitchen bar. I was comfortable and warm. It was the perfect environment to write out my teen angst every morning.

Don’t let yourself forget what it’s like to be sixteen. Anonymous

I still keep my journal every day. I type one full page of Arial 10 point text with half inch margins on all sides. I type until I fill the page, even if I feel empty. When I feel like I have nothing to say, I type the words, “I have nothing to say. I feel empty.” It usually only takes me a couple of iterations of those phrases until I realize that I’m not empty and that I DO have something to say. Typing on the computer is vastly different from the morning routine of my teen years.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. Robert Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

This weblog owes its existence to that morning page. I would post those words, but when I read them they tend to be full of the mundane and irrelevant. I find that the words that end up in my journal are useless. I think of my journal writing as a mind dump. I get rid of all the silly things that are floating in my head so that I can actually write something coherent and interesting.

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior. Christina Baldwin

In July, we moved to a new home closer to town. It’s smaller and much older, but we are really lucky. It has a forced-air gas furnace that works like a dream. The other morning, the heat came on and I couldn’t stop myself. I sat down on the hard wood floor right by the heater vent. The air filled my nightgown and the memory of all those teenaged mornings came to me. The joy of it was too good to stand up and get started with my day. There was only one thing that concerned me: how can I sit on the floor and write my morning page at the same time? Maybe it’s time I went back to paper and pencil.