The Traveling Diary Tour: a sisterhood of stories

At some random point in the past year I read about The Traveling Diary Tour: a sisterhood of stories and immediately signed up to join the tour. The basic premise is a diary travels from woman to woman. When it makes it way to us, we have three days to write as much or as little as we want. The stories run the gambit. You have no idea when the diary will arrive in your mailbox (though the host does give you a warning it is coming soon). Reading this, you can imagine it will likely appear when you are your busiest, most stressed out self. Not only do you have to block out time to write something, you have to bring it to the post office (when it is open) and send it to the next person using a tracking method.

No pressure!

Of course after waiting for so long, you want to read the entrees before you and

think of something memorable to say.

A quick spoiler...there is more than one diary floating around the world. When mine made its way to me there were about a half a dozen entrees. The organizer every so often puts out a pitch to be one of the first few writers -- she is the very first one -- women enjoy reading the stories before their own, otherwise we could just create a blog and write our thoughts (umm...the saying "when you point a finger at someone, three point back at you" comes to mind as I type this).

As I said, it was a busy week. Work was in gala prep mode. I had a board meeting. My colonoscopy was that week. I used my pages to vent about how frustrated I am with how long COVID is lasting, and how many life experiences it has robbed from me (and everyone else, of course, but this was my moment to vent). I then packaged it and mailed it back to the coordinator (I was supposed to send it to someone else, but that message was in an email and not in the envelope). 

Honestly, it felt good. It is a fairly anonymous experience. The coordinator lives in Montclair, NJ, so there is a chance we will gather to meet.

After returning the book I learned I was one of the early people to sign up and am now part of a select group that receives special emails. I don't know if it is true, but the thought does make me smile. A sense of belonging to a special group of women.

Perhaps as life seems to be getting calmer I'll put my name back on the list. I did enjoy reading about the other women. We'll see.