I’ve started journalling again. It’s my Lent Thing this year, I think. Not that I have any serious attachments to Lent or whatever, as I am 1) not Catholic, and 2) not uber traditional, and 3) not a huge fan of the “religion” thing and 4) feeling a little more divided than usual from all my typical pondering on what it means to be a Christian, but since it kind of happened simultaneously, I think it’s a good time to be intentional about these kinds of choices.

The journalling thing was a bit of a production. The thing is, since I was like ten when I started journalling, I’ve always just used scraggly kicking-around notebooks. Apologies to anybody who bought me a diary with a lock and a pretty front at any point in my life, because they just don’t work for me. I rock the Dollarama-Notebook or the 40-Page-4-Pack-Notebook or, in the case of the notebook I pulled out yesterday, the Black-Dollarama-Notebook-That-Has-Been-Kicking-Around-My-Room-For-Over-A-Year-And-Is-Beat-Up-Before-I-Even-Started-Writing-In-It.  These are the kinds of notebooks I use, and I have no idea why.  Even when I was searching out a notebook in my abyss of a bedroom on Wednesday, I found some really nice notebooks. Like glittery flowery butterfly-y ones, but I couldn’t justify using them to journal in.

I have no idea, honestly.

The thing is, I think that this simple action has set me up for what was coming today.

First, I will start by saying that I am twenty years old and I have a financial planner.  So because of this financial planner business, I get e-mails all the time from his Events Manager [I forget her actual title] inviting me to things like free IMAX with free popcorn in exchange for attending a seminar about retirement.  These, despite the free popcorn, are the kinds of things I opt out of seeing as I have only actually had a job for two years and therefore have another at least twenty five, and a whole lot of school, to go before I retire. [I am toying with the idea of amping up my 3-year kinesiology degree to a 4-year, because this seems like a good idea, except more difficult and will take me another year to get through, at least].  So maybe considering I will be in school for the foreseeable future, it is a good thing I have this financial planner guy on my side.  He is a triathlete, so once I found that out I thought he was pretty awesome. Like “Hey, this is a guy I can trust with my money.” [I didn’t actually think that, but I mean, triathletes have to save money to maintain their bikes and buy running shoes and swim gear and consume GU and enter Ironmans and travel to Ironmans right? Anyway, triathletes are awesome.]

It turns out he has a Life Coaching-esque business on the side, and he hosted a Wellness Symposium today. Granted, if I didn’t have the background that I do, I would have had no idea that wellness is the holistic meshing of a variety of domains of health: physical, social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, occupational, because this was not explained at the symposium. So when I got the e-vite to this thing, I got my friend Tara on board and we decided to go on the notion that there might be free fruit, and there was (also my mom came too).

What does my obsession with not-pretty-notebooks have to do with this?

To summate my 2012 goals, I think this is what it is: it comes down to being intentional.  For setting myself up for success.  Over the next 40 days, my life is going to fill that notebook. The good, the bad, the questions, the decisions, the goals, the process. It’s the coming together of the choice to be intentional about what I am doing.  It’s something I feel that I need to be more focused in, and if I’ve been doing the journaling bit since I was ten [sporadically, I might admit], then it’s gotta be of some sort of therapeutic value in my life, even if subconsciously. It’s gotten me through a lot.

It’s an intentional call to be still in the midst of the chaos that is life and actually experience it for what it IS, and hopefully not what it could be. [That is another focus for another night, the being in the moment stuff. Because I am apparently becoming all wrapped up in psychology for a kinesiology major.]

It’s not about the ending, it’s about the story.

It’s about trusting the process.