Luke’s school assignment was to write a daily journal for 30 days. I took a great interest, and we both agreed that we’d publish the journal entries here. Of course, Luke is thrilled that it’s over. Here’s our final entry, though Luke knows he can come back to it any time he wants.
LUKE:
For my project if you looked at what I started out to do in the beginning many would say I failed; however, in my opinion I did accomplish the goal in my mind.
I think this because I said I would do a journal every day for 30 days. I did not do this, but instead I morphed multiple days into one journal entry a couple times. I think this was ok to me because for one Anne Franck didn’t do a journal every day ( She was the basis for this). I did at least talk about every day in a journal just not every single day had its own specific entry.
Much of the times I morphed these days together because I forgot to do the previous day’s which I really should’ve seen coming since my memory is really crap when it comes to these types of things. From this experiment I learned that my short-time memory is much worse than i remembered. I also learned that I really don’t have the mind I think about what I wrote most of the time and actually get something out of it. This also comes from most of the time when I’m writing my journal it feels more like homework than anything. My experiment kind’ve confirmed my thoughts that I don’t think i’ll be able to get much out of a journal but I didn’t think I would be that bad at actually doing it.
RICK:
For me, journaling with Luke was a great exercise in motivating myself to actually produce something worth reading on a daily basis. Unlike Luke, I found myself experiencing things during the days, or observing something happening, and thinking how it would work in the journal.
And I don’t really buy it that Luke is so forgetful. That said, I’m proud that he completed the project for school. Sure, I wish that he was more into the project, that he thought about more topics and that he had the desire I do to express his ideas.
But like most fathers and sons, we see the world through a different lens. I’m sure he doesn’t see the value in some of the things I do, in the same way I don’t understand how he spends his time.
Then again, yesterday we went to the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort. We met some book authors, and Luke had an experience different than sitting in front of his computer screen. We talked about books and writers and I thought some more about my book project on interesting people, the one I still hope to do someday. And we spent a few hours together in the car, and shared a meal at Beef O’Brady’s watching football.
All of our differences aside, it was a good day.
