We have learned wonderful things about people’s lives by what they put into their journals. But I have found that a lot of people put useless information in the journal. I like to give two examples myself. When I was write in my journal lot I would say went to work came home and read a book or did this or that. I put no emotional content or feeling related to those events. When I read a journal entry from my great great grandfather Wilson and he would say walked 12 miles to town such and had dinner with Brother and Sr. so-and-so and that was it. I realize that I and my great great great grandfather missed a wonderful opportunity. By being so sparse in our journal we didn’t take the opportunity to tell our feeling on matters. That can make a journal entry boring.

It would be better to follow the examples of detailed journal entries of some great figures in history. We learn about historical events and thoughts by reading journal entries or letters from our founding fathers such as George Washington, John Adams. From records/journals historical figures and we read about what it was like to debate issues in Philadelphia. We learn history from their life experience and in interacting with that with fellow patriots. Sometimes we learn of other people not from their own journals but from the journal of friends. Those journal entries create to open the window into the type of man Ben Franklin was.

We learned that Ben Franklin was a prankster he loved playing jokes on his friends. There was one particular friend where he was having a doctoral debate on the Scriptures and he says I can prove to you about where a certain theology was in the Bible. they friend said I’ve never read it. Since Ben Franklin was a publisher, he arrange to typeset a fake page of scriptures and had it bound. Ben opened that Bible and showed his the verse that had the doctrine they were discussing, to prove Ben was right. His friend was shocked I have never read that before. He didn’t realize that his friend had created a fake page as a practical joke. What a delightful thing to learn about Ben Franklin was jokester.

Another example is when Ben Franklin acted as the postmaster general for the British post office. One of his responsibilities was to determine how long it took for mail to go from Tavern the Tavern. One day he was right in his horse in a bad storm and he knew that by the time he arrived to the next Tavern he would be soaking wet. He would go to the Tavern and all the wonderful seats close to the fire would be taken. What could he do about it? Then he came up with an idea. He decided to play a joke on the next Tavern. When he arrived there is a boy was assigned to help visitors would take care the horses says he got off the horse Ben Franklin said to the boy get me a bottle of oysters oysters yes a bottle of oysters my horse likes oysters sorrow. The boy was surprised you’d never heard of a horse allied oysters was mother people in the Tavern heard what he said in a sense this case horse likes oysters? They want to see so as Ben Franklin came walking into the Tavern people sorely Tavern to watch this horse eat oysters. Everyone started going toward the front and Ben Franken found a wonderful seat right next to the fire relax and picked up his feet. As the patrons of the Tavern started coming back skies horses doesn’t like oysters.

These are some great examples of the type of fun stories that can go into a journal. But there can be spiritual or live changing events that are documented. The content that stirs the soul in a journal is the meat. Dong this or that is just gravy.

Now that I use the software Dragon Dictate I can now dictate journal entries.

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