My Day In Verbs

So have you heard about this new thing where you journal your day with just verbs?  No?  That’s because I just made it up today.  But, it’s kind of genius, if I do say so myself.  (Disclaimer:  I’m about 63% sure I made this up today.  My tiny amount of research on google has not shown me anything close to this idea.  If it already exists, please let me know!  I’d love to read other people’s work).

I was listening to NPR today in the car and while I don’t even remember what it was exactly I was listening to, I started thinking about writing and poetry and journals and memories.  I love to write, but generally not anything flowery or fictional.  I’ve never been one for journaling because it overwhelms me.  So many words and thoughts and feelings.  Eww.  And my memory is so, so below average which makes keeping a journal difficult and at the same time, sort of crucial.  It would be so great to reread things and have those memories, if only I could remember the things to write down.  See the problem there?

So, I drove on and my mind continued wandering and I thought about how in college I loved Hemingway because of his economy of words and sparse use of adjectives.  My mind wandered through parts of speech and I thought about how so much of my day can be described with verbs.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could use just verbs to convey what a particular day in my life is like.  It’s at once simple, but also challenging because choosing the right verb will convey the right meaning or feeling of a moment.  I started thinking about ee cummings, another of my favorites and how punctuation and spacing might contribute to a stream of verbs.

When I finally sat down today, I started on my verb journal/poem.  Here’s what I’ve come up with.

my-day-in-verbs

So?  What do you think?  Kind of fun, right?  And a little lyrical, if I do say so myself.  What would your day look like in verbs?  Which one’s would you want more of and which would you want less of?  What words are not listed that I wish were?  Craft?  Hug?  Cook?  I think I will be thinking about how I’m spending my time, my actual doing of things in a different way.  Guys, if you’re reading, I’d love to see your day in verbs!  In fact, let’s hash tag it!  #mydayinverbs.

(If you’re wondering how I got my verbs on that cool paper, I used Picmonkey.  It’s one of their free backgrounds and then I just added the text to it.  I love Picmonkey.)

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