A Calendar Made of Birds: Finding Time Again Through Journaling

Time hasn’t felt right since 2020. My mind now tells me things only in reference to before or after the pandemic lockdown. BP or AP, if you will.

And so, for the last 4 1/2 years, the seasons passed in strange loops. I can remember certain events in vivid detail, but never quite when they happened. Time has blurred together. Some months vanished completely, others stretched on endlessly. I lost my grip on the small, grounding things, the rhythm of the year, the tether of the day.

So, this February, I started keeping a journal again. Nothing ambitious, just small notes: the birds at the feeder, the morning’s temperature, what I noticed outside the window. It began as a kind of weather report for some future reader who wanted to know what life was like. A small way to anchor myself back to the world, a never-ending struggle.

At first, I just jotted down the species I spotted: little tawny sparrows, black-capped chickadees, brilliant red Mr. Cardinals and their slightly less colorful yet beautiful Mrs., a few pink-headed house wrens and their less pink wives. The deep freeze. A warm breeze, a whisper of spring. But as the days lengthened, so did the entries, and some days the words didn’t stop. By April, my mind had started to settle in a way it hadn’t in a long time. I felt more present. More like myself. I began to rattle on about what bothered me about the day. What was in my head, in the news, at work. Ways to make money. Ways to slow down and enjoy the moment, an area I struggle in. Worries. Stray memories. Sudden insights. Wrote about good days, the brilliant ideas, and the half-assed ones. Creative ideas bubbled up, ideas that had legs: art quilts, bits of stories, blog post outlines. I didn’t realize how quiet that part of me had gone until my hands returned to writing, ink-heavy and insistent.

Journaling helped me see not just what was happening outside, but what was finally beginning to move again inside.

There’s a strange kind of magic in physical writing. The drag of pen across paper, it slows you down just enough to catch the details. The daily act of picking up that pen became its own kind of stitching, a mending of time, a way to patch together the rift between then and now.

I still write just about every day, skipping is a rarity. Not every page is profound. But what I’ve come to realize is that keeping a journal isn’t about documenting for posterity, it’s about witnessing yourself. Noticing the shifts. Holding the quiet things before they slip away. Honoring the mind’s wandering. Giving your creativity space to knock on the door again. And then the opportunity to answer it.

If you’ve felt unmoored in time these past few years, you’re not alone. But there is a way back. One date, one bird, one breath of warm or cold wind, one thought at a time.

Even if you just write:
“Cloudy. Chickadees and Sparrows. Pink house wren! 38 degrees.”
It’s a beginning.

And beginnings are sacred.