It’s hard to not reflect on the year that’s been come the end of December. In many ways a calendar year provides a neat bookend to a period of time in life that is just long enough to take some major steps in life and short enough to work towards them. I find myself in a reflective mood at this time of year and it serves as a great prologue to planning for the year ahead. What did I achieve? What made me happy? What made me content? What would I do differently? What unexpected things happened? How do I feel about my life and where it is heading?
Of course, being Christmas time also means family have the chance to get together to celebrate (and sometimes aggravate). What constantly brings laughter and smiles to our faces are Dad’s recollections of our various sayings as kids. As we get older we appreciate them more and I’m amazed at Dad’s ability to recall them even after 40 years. One in particular that seems to have everyone erupt in laughter is my question to Dad when I was three years old about his cowboy exploits (an occupation otherwise known as Stockman in Australia). I was obsessed with cowboys/stockmen and my story book at the time depicted some cowboys mustering cattle in amongst the dust whilst wearing their bandanas across their mouths. My innocent question to Dad: “Did you wear a tissue in the dirt time?” still has my siblings in stitches every time they hear it.
And so it got me thinking as to how to capture these gems. Whilst I like to use Lifetick as a journal from time to time, I realised journal trackers serve as a great way to capture additional things that need their own special categories like “Dad’s family stories”.
Since then I have been adding a few other trackers to better “chronicle” my life and some easy ones include “Travel” which is obviously dates and places of my global meandering. Then of course there’s a whole ‘nother tracker called “Travel stories” and thats where it really gets interesting. The thing I like about journal trackers is I don’t have to laboriously add everything at once, but rather just enter them as they come to mind. For “Dad’s family stories” I simply enter the story and back date to when it most likely first took place. Not an exact science, but something that captures the record never to be lost. Of course, future family gatherings will no doubt benefit from my diligent record keeping, so I can only hope I have some stories recorded of the siblings that induce equal amounts of laughter.
May you enjoy your own time of reflection and we wish you the very best for the year ahead.