Some people wonder how I come up with topics. That question is not necessarily praise. It might mean, “how is it that you seem to have a never-ending supply of meaningless drivel with which to punish us week after week ad nauseam?”

Some people who know me, I think, would just rather forget that “Inside Sanpete” exists. And that’s fine — really.

I do have a response that I’ll often give people, when they do ask me about topics and the process of writing the column. I tell them that this is my “journal to the world.”

Once a week, late Sunday night usually, I’ll stare at the computer screen and ask myself, “Self, what’s on your mind? What have you been thinking about lately (that’s fit to print)?”

And so, semi-inadvertently, you, the readers, are given a front-row seat to what’s going on in my world and inside my brain. I would say here now, that my wife kind of holds her breath each week wondering how big of an embarrassment I’m going to be to whatever amounts to our Sanpete reputation.

The fact of the matter is, I’ve been journaling or keeping a diary of sorts, off and on for much of my life. I just haven’t put it out there for everyone to read.

In the earliest part of my life, my mom journaled for me. Do people do “baby books” anymore? I think it might be a bit of a lost art.

When I look back now, I feel pretty good about myself when I read some things that my mother wrote in my baby book. For example:

“Slept good the first night we brought him home. In fact, in 7 months now, we’ve never been up only to feed him at night. He’s the best guy at nite yet.” (Take that! — my three older brothers. And maybe my sister too.)

I sometimes, in theoretical fantasy, think that the fact that I was born at 2:55 a.m. accounts for why I’m a night owl. But once I get to sleep, I’m usually down for the night, barring a dream that I need to go potty, and then in reality — I do.

My wife read something recently about a woman who told her husband, “I’m going to change over and sleep on your side of the bed for a while. Evidently, the dog whining to go out can’t be heard from over there.” I think she was implying that the same circumstances existed in our bedroom.

Keeping a journal is said to have benefits. I’m around people who discuss those benefits regularly. Off and on, for a number of years, I’ve had occasion to attend 12-step addiction recovery meetings. It’s been associated with a church assignment.

Some of us there have taken the challenge to keep daily journals. I’m currently on a two-year run. That’s not as long as some people in the group.

According to the internet, a few of the benefits of journal keeping are: emotional processing, self-reflection, memory enhancement, goal setting and tracking and creativity and mindfulness.

I’ve suddenly decided here now to share a bit more of my life with you via bits of diary/journal entries for this publication day, August 6th, in other years. You’re not going to get any deep emotional outpourings. You’ll have to come to my funeral for others to give you that. We’ll see what we get out of this idea. (I haven’t even looked yet at what I’m proposing to share.)

August 6th, 1974: “…swimming pool was closed so we (my brother and I) went to Jep’s Hole (a deep and wide place in the canal) and had a swim; read the paper and saw part of Miss Black USA…”

August 6th, 1976: (this was a memorable day actually; someone credits me with saving their life at Lake Powell; I’m giving you the shortened ending part) “… we were swimming out quite a distance to air mattresses which were floating away; he became tired and didn’t think he’d make it; I got to a mattress and got back to him with it before any real trauma…” (It was a panicked swim for me)

August 6th, 1977: (Just to be real here…. “No entry”)

August 6th, 2020: Gratitude: Nice bike riding evening and weather

That’s a little sampling. And that’s enough. You get the idea. It’s a fun concept for me to go back and see where I was and what I was doing in certain years and on certain days.

Oh, I almost forgot. My wife is an excellent journal keeper — for many years running. In 2018, for our anniversary, she gave me a copy of her journal as it related to me during our dating years. Here’s “close dates” to August 6th entries:

August 12th, 1977: “… we saw the play “Romeo and Juliet”… (at Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City” (copies of tickets were kept; $2.00 each)

August 7th, 1978: “…finished my paper and my roommates and I watched ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’ I cried as usual. Merrill called too.” (I probably made her cry a second time; insensitive boyfriend)

So what if you haven’t done any journaling and you think you might want to start. What should you do?

There are apps available on your phone or computer that you can use. Some people love that. You can “speak” your entries and then edit them and the app company will print your journal into a book, if you want, for quite a reasonable fee. (I saw one person’s good-sized book, which included photos, covering a year, that was printed for $40.)

I’m still old school. I write with a pen, usually in a journal book that I find at Walmart. The important thing is to just write anything to get started — one sentence. “I sprained my ankle today.” “I told the neighbor that I loved the look of their dog, but the barking needs to stop.” “The Browns brought some sugar-free fudge over. How did they know that’s what I needed?” “I read Merrill Ogden’s column — what a weirdo!”

It won’t be long before you’ve created the habit of journal keeping. And then, you too, can bore people to tears by sharing snippets of your life from your past. — Merrill