Somehow I’ve been recalling an invasion of my journals, way back when there were only a couple of notebooks, or maybe a few more, as my collection.

Decades later, I was told that nobody has any business opening anyone else’s journals – it’s an invasion of not just privacy but personal integrity. A form of abuse, actually.

The reaction at the time, though, continues to haunt me: “These look like they’re for publication. There’s nothing personal!”

Meaning, as I still hear it, no deep feelings or emotions.

This, mind you, was coming from a neighbor and dear friend, not a lover.

She had no business – absolutely none – for violating my psyche. Remember that, if you must when facing a similar temptation.

When I started journaling, about the time I graduated from college, I was attempting to construct a thread to help me identify the scope of “my problem” through a period of rejection and deep depression. What emerged was more a matter of observing the world around me and the many startling new experiences my encounters were presenting. To my surprise, I started recording far more of the highs than the psychological lows. Many of the entries have ultimately worked their way into my fiction and poetry, either as prompts or details. And many other pages remain embarrassing claptrap.

Apparently something similar happened when I was living in the ashram. In reviewing those journals much later, I was appalled to find someone had ripped out whole pages. I wish I could see what I’d written – it must have touched realities too close to raw truth.

Much later, when I was more candid in recording my feelings and emotions, a girlfriend did clandestinely dig into my more recent pages and then, when I came home from the office, turned those confessions to myself against me. This was in something that was a difficult relationship from the get-go, and where else could I pour my confusion and anger, much less look at issues I needed to work on? The underlying message was stifling. Bottle your emotions. Keep quiet. Anything you say or write may be held against you.

This countered an underlying problem I’ve had in that I’ve always had trouble fully acknowledging or owning my feelings and emotions. The reasons are many and deeply buried, but one result is that I live far more in my left brain than the right, at least as far as human relationships go. As for expressing them? A first draft might land far from the mark.

Well, for those who might wonder about those journals – now up to volume No. 188 – I can say you’d find most of them pretty boring. Much of the time my biggest challenge comes simply in trying to track the events of the previous week or so. Unlike my wife, who can remember in vivid detail events from decades ago, my days become blurs. She’s come to realize I’m defenseless in arguments, simply because I have no idea what I meant when I allegedly said or did such and so years ago. (Anyone else have that experience?)

Add to that my penchant for an idealistic outlook and, well, what results is often more an outline to be filled in later, should I get a chance.

Years before I left formal employment, I’d occasionally try to sketch out daily and weekly routines I might follow once found myself free (that is, retired or in some other way financially independent). Usually this exercise would arise as part of my annual year-end review and year-ahead planning, an event that included drafting my Yule letter to family and friends.

I remember my wife’s reaction on chancing across one of those, once I’d remarried. She thought I’d left a lot out – essentially, I’d overlooked all the important stuff, and not just more time for the two of us to spend together. These days, I think she’s right, and that’s even before I reopen any of those proposals.

What I’d envisioned was more time for meditation, yoga, reading, and reflection – none of which have manifested, by the way – plus deep pockets for writing and serious literary enterprise accompanied by intensified Quaker activity. Whatever I’d considered for home maintenance, inside or out, now appears totally inadequate. And that’s before adding time for activities that weren’t on the horizon in the earlier grid sheets – choir (which occupies most of one afternoon and evening), my daily laps in the pool, and blogging and other social networking.

Maybe downsizing to a smaller house would free up something, but just thinking of that effort’s intimidating.

I remember pondering what kind of schedule would work best for me – a rather strict daily round, but that somehow always seemed to shortchange something, or a more flexible weekly one based on blocks of time, somewhat the way an attorney bills clients for hours worked. As I recall, that seemed to settle into two-hour blocks for most of the activities, with the option, for example, of using all five of my literary blocks for the week in a single day or stretching them out.

Let’s just say I’m still looking for a workable system. My late-night commute to Boston for choir throws the next day out of whack, I’m still not napping in the afternoon, the best swimming slot depends on what opens up around the indoor pool’s schedule of teams and clubs, and rising early is something that fits best with my wife’s natural rhythms and my creative energy flow. And that’s before we get to something like trying to help the carpenter in major house renovations or addressing an unexpected emergency of crisis (aren’t they all unexpected?).

I’m thinking, too, of the many different ways individual writers approach their use of time. Some, like Jack Kerouac, would go off on binges – two weeks of nearly no sleep to pound out a frenzied draft, followed by months of recovery – while others put in their daily “butt time” at the keyboard, as Charles Bukowski phrased it. I prefer the latter, though in my employed years often had to indulge in the Kerouac method over holidays, weekends, and vacations.

Perhaps my central concern here is that without some structure – a daily routine, a weekly pace, a monthly and yearly calendar, nothing of note will be accomplished. I harbor a nagging suspicion somewhere – could it be a seed of Protestant guilt carried from childhood? – that the endless interruptions of life will engulf and swamp any greater ambition? (Or is it even, as one beloved uncle has sensed, that we Hodsons have never known how to have fun?)

So here I am, needing to dress for the day and charge out into the garden as promised.

One thing I can definitely say: Everything takes longer than planned.