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In my twenties I began a diary. I’d make the typical entry, about what happened during my day and jot down philosophical thoughts. (Eventually, I kept a record of a special period of my life that I wanted to savor and give to a special person one day. I’ll tell you about this later in the blog.) It was neat to review my diary and reminisce about certain events and thoughts. At some point in time, I realized my diary could be like a close friend, an advisor. I began jotting down notes about habits I wanted to break or new ones I wanted to begin. Chief among them, was my desire to maintain good physical and emotional emotional energy at all times. Impossible, I know, but I wanted to do better.

I was often fatigued in the morning. During my high school and college years, I developed the habit of staying out much too late with friends or at events. I’d wake up feeling tired and with headaches from over-enjoying. I began to write such things in my diary, as, “Last night, I was out with so and so at the such and such event. “If I had come home earlier, I’d have felt better today.” At that point, my diary began being quite helpful. I’d reread this type of entry. The reminder and advice from my friend the diary began to sink in deeper.

During my childhood I developed a bad habit related to the above. As I grew more self-aware, I developed an increasing desire to break it; I needed help from my diary. When I tell you what it is, will you allow me to blame it on my father? Okay, I won’t do that. And if I should blame it on him, I forgive him as I want my kids to forgive me for my trespasses. My father could chat with people for hours on end, and I became a good student of it.

My father was a free-lance musician who was mostly retired by the time I was in my teens, so he had plenty of time to chat . He was a responsible, charming and inspiring man, and I met a lot of wonderful people with him. When we went places with him in the Connecticut suburb where I grew up, I met all sorts of interesting people. He and his friends and acquaintances would chat for long periods of time.

My father was interesting. He found good in everyone he met. He had played music at public venues since a boy, studied physics in college, and music in graduate school. He had worked in the music business in Boston and New York all his life. He had endless stories about life; many of the made people chuckle. Sometimes if we were around a group of young people, they would sit around to be entertained and to hear his wisdom.

I picked up the habit of chatting at length, which was not the healthiest thing for a kid far from retirement. In my twenties I wanted to break that habit, because I left me feeling worn. Thus, I began writing in my diary. “You feel tired today because you spent too much time chatting with people today. You should have gone home and spent more quiet time alone. You should have listened more and talked less.” It wasn’t long before this advice began to sink in. I would talk less, listen more, and sometimes take the chair behind a group of friends and keep quiet. I’d get to bed earlier. I’d wake up with a mind rejuvenated.

This led to a long-term diary of recording notes on the situations that tired me, the people, the situations, the length of time chatting. (Today, as you may know, those intense folks who wear us out are known as “Energy Vampires.”) It has led me to being much more self-aware and to take care of myself better.

I mentioned in the beginning of this blog that I kept a diary during a special period of my life: the first few years of my daughter’s life. When she was six months old, I wrote, “I fed her her first cereal the other day off a rubber coated spoon. She now lays on the floor and pushes herself over on her stomach. Then she tries to push herself along, but she can’t yet. At nine months, I wrote, “We started playing a game. I stick my finger in her mouth and she tries to bite it before I pull it out. I started giggling and she burst into laughter. At almost a year: “She has four teeth on top and four on bottom. She says two words, “Da Da” and “Hi.” (That makes me feel good.) At about two years old, “We heard a thud on the floor in her room. A moment later, she was crying outside our door. I asked my wife if she put her in the crib. “She must have climbed out.” After that, we put her in her new bed. “And you guessed it. We find the cuddly little girl in our bed each morning.”

I recently made a copy of that diary and gave it to my daughter, which was a very special moment. I later asked her if she read it. She said with a big smile, “Some of it.”

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