father was a man of few words.
He and I did not see eye to eye.
grew up on a cattle ranch.
My mom was an English teacher.
My dad was a cattle rancher.
It was in the '60s.
I was a young man, I was only 17.
And my father had had some difficulties with me.
I had been in some trouble.
He got a notice from the Sheriff that they
were coming to look for me.
little something had happened.
And my dad had talked tried everything,
and he finally got the point, and I
think he just ran out of things to say.
He walked over to the bookcase, and he pulled out
an old journal, and he just opened it to a page
and handed it to me.
And the journal was from my great-great grandfather,
his grandfather.
His name was David Murdock.
As a 17-year-old boy, as I read in his handwriting,
and what it had been like, and the problems
he'd gone through-- I had not anticipated
it affecting me the way it did.
He used to say, I've busted a lot of broncs,
and then they had to bust me.
And he was that kind of guy.
And I liked that.
That just said something to me.
So I read about him.
I realized that I was pretty much like that.
I had a lot of vim and vinegar, and hadn't
made a lot of good decisions to that point.
But as I read his journal, it was-- there's something
about the voices down through the ages.
I'd never met him.
He'd been gone many years.
If he was like this, maybe I'm not so different.
So I decided right then-- one of the things I decided was,
I was going to keep a journal. and I have.
I used to write them by hand, and then now with the computer
I bind them each year.
But it obviously got out of my problems with the Sheriff.
Although my dad did let me do some time on the county farm,
I never forgot that journal.
I never forgot what it meant, to put your thoughts down.
Nobody's memory's-- they say the longest memory is not as good
as a short pencil.
And that's true.
That's what journals do for you.
I mean, as I go back and read things
I realize how much I've changed.
It's made a huge difference in my life.
I'm very, very much an evangelist when
it comes to journal writing, because you leave pictures
of yourself behind, and things like that,
but you don't leave your essence,
unless you leave a journal.
It leaves part of your soul, certainly part of your brain,
and I think part of your heart on a page,
for somebody to read.
And that's more important than almost anything
you can leave behind, certainly more than money,
or land, or wealth.
That's true of.
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