It seems that I have always kept a journal only they called them diaries in those days. Why do I say always? Because I really don't remember when I actually started one. It seems to me that I was always writing something down, I was that taken with myself over having learned to write, albeit I possessed a very rudimentary language. But that's neither here nor there. The point is I wrote and wrote and wrote. As if that were not enough to drive anyone crazy, I was constantly calling someone's attention to anything I felt moved to scribble, so my mother had told me.

"See, that's how I write my name! I would declare to her. She would nod and say that it was very nice. "And that says that I am in the first grade!" I would announce proudly watching her nod again. I'm told that I continued on that way, always asking my mother to look at my writings, until I was a full-fledged record keeper when, by the time I was a pre-teen, I had stacks of hard cover books filled with the trivia's of my life. It was then also I discovered, quite by accident, that my mother could neither read nor write!

How does a person live without reading and writing was the shocking question I had asked her and myself. She didn't know she had answered me innocently. Since she had had to start working early in her life, at nine years old, she had never gone beyond the third grade and so she had no concept that the lack of possessing a reading and writing knowledge was a life impacting deficiency.

How did we attempt to cure her void? Easy. First taught her our alphabet, by sound, by song and then by symbols on paper. (She kept her alphabet paper in her apron pocket, checking it every chance she got, until it was worn and we would make another) Everyday from then on until I left home to embark on my own life, I would explain one word to her, then print and write it out for her to copy. She had to print it twenty times then write it another twenty times. Even though she felt she had to hide doing it, she was diligent and soon she had given herself a working vocabulary, at least enough to read the funny papers and understand their humor. She never abandoned the practice of learning one word a day and during her years she went on to became an avid reader and a successful pen pal to many of the younger people in our family. At the age of fifty, not only did she have hard-cover books full of self, family and life musings and sketches to illustrate their passages, as monks of old used to do in their journals, but, utilizing self-help books, she taught herself oil painting on canvas. Many of her canvases, evaluated as museum quality work, hang in my home today.

So, my frustration is that there doesn't seem to be enough words in our English vocabulary, over 400,00 of them, to express the value of the written word. While I had taken my gradual ability to read and write as natural, I became aware of it as an invaluable tool everyday I saw my mother struggle to learn to do it letter-by-letter, syllable-by-syllable, word-by-word, and then apply what she learned to open up the world around her.

With less effort than my mother had to use, everyone today can manage to keep a journal, either by hand or computer. Artists, religious, civil, business and royal leaders find that keeping a journal is invaluable to their lives. In fact, I think royalty is required to keep a private daily journal for history's sake. For those of you who feel they can think better in writing to those of you who want to leave a written account of how you see and experience the world then journal keeping is for you. Hard and fast rules need not regulate your journaling nor need you be a tabloid headliner nor do you have to write every day as my mother and I did. Use your own comfortable technique. Perhaps writing in a small notebook you carry around with you or in a bound book at home or typing in a secret file in you computer is your thing.

So, put your fears of writing aside and get started. Loosen up and go for it. If you can, access the Internet: Diarists.com, Diaryland.com, Blogger.com, plus search for other sites. Read books and journals on the subject and, if a group is your thing, then join a writer's group. You won't regret making this kind of decision in your life.