One Line A Day
a five year time capsule
Five years ago, Weston gave me a seemingly ordinary birthday gift. What it has done for me since is nothing short of extraordinary. He gave me a journal titled One Line A Day, which was laid out with a single page for every day of the year for five years, each with a set of lines to fill in. On November 12, 2020, I began. Every single day I filled in the lines with details large, lofty, tiny and intricate. David Sedaris writes a few lines about his day every single day, and has for the last several decades. When I first learned this, I was astonished. I had tried it a few times, starting and stopping, using old notebooks that had a stack of empty pages, attempting in my odd obsessive way to fill them up. It never stuck. This compact volume has.
April 24
2021: Weston went to his birthday massage while Madeline and I worked on our busy box project. Yoga surprise with all of my Minneapolis girl friends at the park with all of the rest of the crew afterwards. So sweet.
2022: Quiet morning - finished my Nick Offerman book, then busy afternoon with Isaac and Violet’s birthday parties. More garden work and fajitas for dinner.
2023: Difficult times at work deciding on whether to build our new application in pega or java. Dumb. Rice and beans didn’t turn out great. Rosemont Bakery visits are an addiction. Nina opened up to me about a friend situation.
2024: Really great therapy session with Hannah. Felt good about positive feedback on the work I am doing. Vanity and toilet are in!!! Climate base informational session. Laundry and swimming and grocery shopping and riding this positive feeling.
2025: Amazing first day in NYC! Mad and I went to the Strand (swoon), to Journeys to buy Mad’s first pair of Converse (purple), and Chelsea Market where we met up with Weston. Delicious bagels and strawberries dipped in chocolate. Little Island, West side sunny delights, 42 dogs and dinner at Emily Burger!
This mini journal asked me to slow down, simplify what I did each day and meditate briefly on how I felt about it. So much life is contained within these pages: the good and the bad and every single thing in between. There are two things that I have found surprising about this seemingly simple task of documenting a bit of life each day. One is that it’s not simple at all. It actually takes significant effort, as well as time and discipline. The other surprise is the incredible perspective it has brought, day after day, year over year. Events and challenges that seemed so significant, so world-ending in the moment, disappeared into these pages. A year later, I’d read over them, and see how small they actually were. New worries or deadlines or bouts of depression would fill the next pages, only to be turned and forgotten or used as fodder for transformation.
June 28
2021: Worked at the house while Tim painted our living room wall. Great lunch conversation. Worked in Madeline’s little loft bed nook.
2022: COVID. FELT AWFUL. DIDN’T LEAVE THE BED.
2023: Feeling anxious about my trip back to Wisconsin. No drinking. Haircut. Yoga. Writing. Softness. Bath night - jumped in the tub with Madeline. Watching ‘The Bear’ and ‘Perry Mason’ - both balms.
2024: No work. Wrote and went to Tandem Coffee with Weston and talked to Paul. Had a full exhale after a long week without Madeline. Picnic with Annie and Caroline and then drove to pick up my baby from her first week of overnight camp.
2025: Slow Saturday. Yoga with Theo for her birthday. Cried a bit in Savasana. Farmers market in the rain. Stopped at a book store for a book on Austria. Chatted with Nina. Began crocheting the Sorting Hat for Madeline’s birthday. Invited the neighbors over for salmon. Watched ‘Hook!’
After a couple of years of writing in this way, I began to see patterns. Seasons and times of year repeated themselves in the most beautiful way. Some days we actually did things like carve pumpkins for Halloween on the exact same day a year prior, without realizing it. Some days we were across the ocean or on a plane on the same day. Some days we played Monopoly or had a back yard bonfire, or saw the same people on the exact same day. Within these pages, the flow and shape of a year became so tangible.
September 12
2021: Quieter day - cleaned up and went for a walk with Poe in South Portland. Purple carrots for dinner. Watched ‘Our Planet.’
2022: Madeline woke up with a sore throat so stayed home with me. She’s cranky but sweet. Hung laundry, read the ‘Little Miss’ books in the basement, watered the garden, and toggled between meetings.
2023: Swam at the gym - so happy to be working out. Week 1 of Ebb & Flow writing class. So excited to be doing this - it’s like therapy (and as expensive!) Tilly & Toby came for dinner.
2024: Work and soccer practice and Little Pig takeout and Roses picnic on the Eastern Promenade with a gorgeous ocean view. Weston is working late so I am holding so much.
2025: Long Friday of working. Mad and Weston biked to school, then we picked her up together. I rode my bike over my glasses and shattered them. Went to Twin Swirls for ice cream. All is feeling good and manageable, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This gift also gave me the exercise of encapsulating a time in my life that is so rich with stories and memories I would have otherwise not held so succinctly in one place. Within the last five years, Madeline has grown from a 4 year old to a 9 year old, started Kindergarten, and first grade, and second grade, and third grade, and fourth grade - each with 365 days in between. We trudged through a global pandemic, we moved across the country, we traveled to five different countries and countless different states. We renovated our kitchen and bathroom. Weston ended and began three new jobs. I made a whole new group of friends who nourish me and teach me and make me laugh. I began cold dipping in the bright blue ocean. I stopped drinking twice, got covid, started a substack, got involved in the community. I witnessed my dad fight hard and push through several health challenges. We hosted an amazing exchange student and gained a German daughter. Joe Biden was elected president on a day of extreme jubilation, and then Donald Trump was elected four years later on a day of agony and darkness. These five years have been significant in these major events and stretching plane rides and new teachers and jobs, of course, but the pages have helped me break them down into tiny days of dog food bowls overturned, flowers planted in the front yard, TV shows consumed and enjoyed, and phone calls taken via ear bud on walks throughout my neighborhood. My writing teacher would aptly call this “the sound of real life happening.”
November 9
2021: Negative test so I got to be back in the land of the living and snuggle my baby. More brain-spotting got me down. Trying to detox.
2022: Swimming, then spilled my coffee all over my desk. Still in disbelief that Nina and Maggie might be coming here tomorrow. Bath night. Trying to breathe.
2023: Must be daylight savings time. Continuous work on get unstuck. Slogging through work. Reading a lot. Watching Dopesick makes me sick. Auction night at the Italian Community Center for a great cause, and new keyboard for Madeline.
2024: Kripalu. Woke from a dead hydroxyzine induced sleep to Kaili touching my foot - “Good morning beautiful.” Silent breakfast and reading in the sun room Yoga at noon and 4:45, cold dip in between, shower, delicious food, deep chats with Becky.
2025: Bought another interior wooden door for the continuing collection. Prepped for Monday Night Dinner and Weston to be gone for the week. Mad hiked with Girl Scouts and I walked without earbuds or phone around Back Cove. Good long talk with dad.
Each day I would look at the year before and read my notes from one, two, three, four years prior to see how all of my everyday details made up a rich and storied whole. Each day I was deeply moved by both the impermanence and depth of meaning of it all. On November 12, 2025, I completed the book. Just a few weeks prior, I came upon a charming bookshop during a weekend getaway and found myself lingering for a while. On one of the cedar shelves, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a One Line A Day notebook. It was the exact same style and brand as the one I was about to finish. I had been waffling about whether I’d ever commit to this practice again, this long game of dedicated documentation. In this little shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I found my answer.
These tiny time capsules are everything.
I did that for several years Lisa, and wish I’d never stopped. I don’t think I was quite as open and vulnerable about my inner world, but it would have read a lot like yours. If I’d been braver.