December makes a tidy frame for a year that may have been anything but tidy. Lists appear everywhere: places visited, goals reached, things finally done. If your own year involved waiting, changing direction or getting through a difficult stretch, that format can leave a great deal out.
You can look back without turning the exercise into a ranking of your life. Set aside half an hour, find something to write on and choose a few moments you want to remember accurately.
Use your calendar before your memory
Open the calendar or look through a few photographs. Start in January and move slowly. You may find ordinary things that had disappeared from your summary of the year: a meal, a finished task, a person you saw regularly for a while.
Write down what happened before deciding whether it was an achievement. “I took my mother to appointments” or “I kept applying for work” records time and effort that a list of milestones might miss.
Leave room for events you did not choose. A delay or disappointment can have shaped several months, even when there is no neat lesson you want to attach to it.
Ask a question with a useful answer
“Was this a good year?” can become an argument with yourself. Try a question that points to something you could understand or use instead.
- When did I feel most like myself?
- Who made an ordinary week easier?
- What did I spend time on that I would like to reduce?
- What do I want to make room for again?
You do not need a full answer to every question. A name, a date or a few lines may be enough. If one question turns into a page, let the others wait.
Let unfinished things stay specific
There may be a plan you still want to carry forward. There may also be one you would feel relieved to stop carrying.
Write them separately. For a continuing plan, note the next action you can actually take. For a plan you are leaving behind, record what changed. You can stop pursuing something because your circumstances or interests changed, without rewriting the earlier wish as a mistake.
Some things will remain unresolved after the exercise. You are allowed to leave a question mark on the page rather than supplying a conclusion you do not believe.
Choose one detail to keep
Before you close the notebook, choose something from the year that you want to stay within reach. It could be a photograph to print, a message to save or a thank-you you have not yet sent.
You might prefer to give an object a date: the scarf from the trip, a bracelet you wore through a particular month, a small purchase made after finishing something important. The object can hold a specific association without having to summarise the whole year.
Then decide where the page will live. Put it in the back of the notebook or in an envelope marked with the year. You can come back to it later, when December's version of events is no longer the only one available.
Back to the journal
