Maybe keeping a journal is as valuable as they say it is. I'm looking at my old notebooks and there is a lot of 'stuff' in there (like the quote below). I've never done the kind of journaling where you recount the events of the day - but I do have hoards and hoards and hoards of black, unlined notebooks full of quotes, sketches, songs, or little notes about about things that happened that I don't want to forget. Things that keep my embers glowing, so to speak.
“Well he said getting truculent, you yourself always said I was an extraordinary person well then an extraordinary person can do anything, ah I said catching him by the lapels of his coat and shaking him, you are extraordinary within your limits but your limits are extraordinarily there and I said shaking him hard, you know it, you know it as well as I know it … but don’t go on trying to make me tell you it is poetry and I shook him again, well he said supposing I do know it, what will I do, what will you do said I and I kissed him.”
Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography
Northern Ireland, Summer 2013