Do You Have a Glimmer Journal?

When I was at community college, a guest speaker came. I don’t recall her name, and barely her face, though I think she had blonde hair…She spoke about her life living on a ranch, how she had dropped her urban upbringing and went to live on a ranch in Montana, learning the hard work of keeping horses and cows and everything else. That’s why she came, you see—to talk about the book she wrote.

A nonfiction book, rather, nothing made-up. And the part I remember most vividly was this woman answering a question from the audience, at the end of her talk. I don’t know the question precisely. It must have related to how she remembered so much of her past, in so much detail, that she could write about it.

Oh.

Right now, reading that back, I wonder the same damn thing. How do you start to analyze your own life, and fit it into a narrative, even a loose one? I’ve done it in bits before. Never to the length of a memoir. It must drain and wear on the soul, even if the memories are good.

The woman’s answer inspired an ongoing trove of my ideas: a glimmer journal.

See, the woman didn’t like "inspiration book" or "list of ideas" or "brainstorming." They didn’t inspire creative flow; in fact, she felt they impeded it by implying that they all had to turn into something great; or on the flip side, they just looked like lame and undeveloped thoughts, ultimately useless.

Glimmer, though. Glimmer says something else.

It says, I saw something beautiful today. I made a connection that gave me chills. A poetic verse crossed my mind in my anger. Hey, that’s funny!

It says, I can sit in your journal for years, forgotten, until one day you scroll past me, stop, and realize I’m what you need to expand upon.

This is the glimmer journal. If I showed you mine, you’d probably laugh. There are so many things, so many random things, disjoined, one thought completely divergent from the last, sometimes just two words, other times, ten lines. It’s in my Notes app on my phone & computer, and I add to it every day. Even ideas that I’ve taken from it, I leave there, because I sometimes feel that I’ve not exhausted it and should really try to.

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Let me share with you the bottom five items in my glimmer journal:

5.    A link to a "How Stuff Works" article on lightning.

4.    “Not living in the present, getting things done off-page.”

3.    A screenshot from a random comment section that reads: “I think what happened, happened. It’s in the past and we know what happened was wrong. But there’s nothing we can do to change the past or the way these innocent people were treated. It’s not fair to just say forget about it, but at least drop the grudges and let it lie. It was a bad part of history but we all have to deal with it. I liked this page. It has helped me grip a sense of what went on so I could write my paper a little better. Thank you Steven Butler in Tokyo!” It was posted on my exact birthday.

2.    “More related to siblings than offspring. Honeybees, ants. Hive-mind motivation for life/dharma.”

1.    “The night is screaming. Night is the time for screaming. Forests, rainforests.”

It’s been at least 4 years since I wrote these ones. I haven’t written anything out of them, but I have been working on a story that involves lightning. That might be a coincidence. Or a weird subconscious memory thing.

I add to the top. Just a few things, every day or so. My job gives me a lot of time to think, and often I’ll tell myself to remember what I think, and in the next minute it’s gone. This journal should be there to help me. And it is. It’s not always possible to jot an idea down, though. But my journal is there, even still.

Remember the woman? Well, she said something I really appreciate. That even if your idea seems terrible right now, it has its time. She said there were glimmers she’d written decades ago that she added to her book, ideas that she wanted to erase because they’d either sat for too long or had lost their luster over time. After hearing that, I couldn't help but think of all the ideas I’d deleted or failed to write down that could have turned into something great. I’ve learned not to discount ideas, no matter how they seem in the moment.

Now, I have a question for you. Do you have a glimmer journal?