Lately I have been contemplating something very radical. It is a thought so heretical that I can only make little mental forays toward it, and then, reversing quickly, divert myself with some other compelling distraction.

I have gone so far as to try on what a day might look like if I carried through with the consequences of the idea…gone so far…and then quickly, like a mouse rushing toward the safety of its lair, I’ve reversed the decision and reverted to my usual routine.

This crazy plan, this harebrained scheme, this complete turnabout in my life is the unorthodox idea of no longer keeping a journal.

See? I told you it was life-threatening.

Now, if you are not a regular journal keeper, this might not seem like a major decision. But I have hand-written three pages each morning for the last seventeen years of my life. And truly, I have journals that go back for another twenty-five more years before that.

It is my ritual. My routine. This is how a day starts: a coffee by my side, my journal open in front of me, and the pen in motion. Some days I write longer, but very rarely do I write any less than three-fully-scrawled pages. One might conclude that I am rather disciplined in this approach.

And therein lies my reasoning to abdicate the practise.

You might say that self-discipline was encouraged in our house. Growing up on Cherry Street, my mother somehow managed to stuff two pianos and an organ into our little pink and yellow house. One daughter, usually Diane, would wear the headphones and practise the organ,  Rhonda would be pounding out scales on the living room piano and the third daughter (that would be me) would be at the end of the hall practising the latest scales and Royal Conservatory pieces…for up to four hours each day.

So, yes, I know all about about drills and mastery of a routine. Indeed I do.

As much as I have enjoyed my journal habit, I have been wondering if it is just that same early-childhood learning dressed up in a new sheepy-disguise. Is my morning habit just one more thing I feel I need to accomplish to justify my existence? Surely that can’t still be the case?

But in my ongoing process of self-discovery and awareness, I am so often the last to know what’s really going on in my head. I swear perfect strangers often have a better read on what I’m about than I do.

So.  There’s only one way to find out what this might look like: I’m going cold turkey on the journal thing.

I will still take notes and keep a journal on trips and on a random as-I-feel-like-it basis. But no more will I just do it because ‘that’s what I do’.

I hereby declare my life to be journal free. I know it’s kind of crazy, but this actually makes my hands sweat as I write this.

Now of course, I have a new problem. In my new downsized and now, journal-free life…what do I do with all those bins and boxes of journals?

Holy shit.