I’m just about done Eat, Pray, Love. I feel like the last person on earth to read it, but that’s the beauty of a book. It’s always there to be experienced. You don’t have to do it when the crowd does it, you can do it on your own time. Last night I was looking back on some of the pages I dog-eared—reminding myself that those pages in particular stood out to me for one reason or another—and I found this gem. Elizabeth’s journey to wholeness began with a journal entry. Actually it began with emotional agony and uncertainty, but she was able to sooth herself with writing. It reminded me that this is what therapy is essentially: tapping into the parts of yourself that are focused and strong and asking them to help the parts of you that are trembling and weak.

Page 54 (of the paperback)

What I write in my journal tonight is that I’m weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I’m terrified that I will never really pull my life together.
In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:

I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

J is for July. J is also for journal. And I’m so excited because this July is the month my book on journal writing will hit shelves. I’ll spend this month (and probably next) on the look out for stories on journal-related things.

I found a good one today. A recent study reveals that people who keep diaries while trying to loose weigh have an easier time of it. “The study involving 1,685 middle-aged men and women over six months found those who kept such a diary just about every day lost about twice as much weight as those who did not.”

Although I’ve never kept a weight-loss diary, this makes perfect sense to me. Writing in a journal (diary as we’re calling it here) forces you to reconcile with yourself. You have to face the problem (the extra weight) and come up with your own solution. Writing a goal down solidifies it—makes it permanent. It’s more difficult to cast aside once it’s been written.

I’ll take an independent film over a blockbuster any day, and this past weekend I saw a good one. It’s called Trumbo—the story of screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo. If you don’t know him by name, you know his work.

In 1947, Trumbo, along with nine other writers and directors, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify on the presence of Communist influence in Hollywood. Trumbo refused to cooperate. He was blacklisted, and eventually, spent 11 months in prison in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky. Once released from prison in the early 1950s, Trumbo continued to write scripts—such as Roman Holiday and The Brave One both of which went on to win Academy Awards—under different names. In 1960, after ten years of writing under a pseudonym, staring actor Kirk Douglas decided to make public Trumbo’s credit for writing Spartacus. This was the beginning of the end of the blacklist.

It’ll come as no surprise that my favorite aspect of the documentary is that the story is powerfully told through the words of Dalton Trumbo’s letters as read by Joan Allen, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane, Josh Lucas, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, Donald Sutherland, Michael Douglas, and Brian Dennehy.

I was just made aware of the fact that this humble Web site you see before you was mentioned on the Tyra Banks Show as part of a “make your life easier” story. Thank you Tyra! If you need a letter written on your behalf, you know where I am.

True story: I was applying for a job a few months back. I dutifully e-mailed my cover letter and resume and, once they were sent, immediately came up with my “follow-up” plan. The listing specifically said, “No phones calls,” so I scratched that idea but then I thought What good does it do to follow-up with an e-mail if you haven’t received a response to your first e-mail? I decided to follow-up with a note. I really did. It was a short handwritten note (thank-you note sized) that said something along the lines of, “I hope this finds you well. I sent my cover letter and resume a few days ago, and I’d very much like to have the chance to meet with you.” I’m sure I reiterated my interest in the position, too, and also wrote my e-mail address at the bottom. You get the idea. I mailed the note the same day I e-mailed my resume—planning it so she’d receive it two or three days later. Done and done.

The following week I received an e-mail from the hiring editor saying she received my note but not my e-mail. Apparently, the e-mail went straight into her spam file (um, G-mail what’s up with that?) The real live note, however, got to her and she then wrote and asked me to re-send my official papers. Isn’t that cool? I didn’t get the job. But who cares. Had I not sent my note I would have had no shot whatsoever at the job—completely unbeknownst to me. I sent the e-mail and received nothing from my good friend Mailer Daemon saying it wasn’t delivered. I would have sat and wondered. My follow-up note alleviated the wondering.

Think this was a freak accident? Think again. This past weekend, The New York Times did a nice write up on this very problem—sometimes e-mails really just don’t go through: IN THE E-MAIL RELAY, NOT EVERY HANDOFF IS SMOOTH