The Art of Documenting Your Life & Why It Changes Everything
Its 7pm, and I’m currently on my couch beneath my favorite white knitted blanket, the fireplace going in front of me. I’m sipping on a mocktail while listening to birds chirp in my earbuds. I’m more relaxed, secure, and grounded than I have been in a long time, and the things listed above are just the tip of the iceberg. This moment feels surreal, and this calm didn’t just come out of nowhere.
I’ve spent the last 15 years documenting my life on this platform in various ways, sharing my fears, dreams, accomplishments, and failures thinking it was a meaningful hobby. The thing is, though, it’s not a hobby at all. It’s not just creative expression. What I’ve created here is emotional infrastructure.
So much of my content has been focused on a personal journey, from my move to Nashville to my bucket list, to photography, to marketing. Each season of content was tied to personal transformation. And while I’ve always known just how much I love writing, I didn’t realize that the act of documenting my life – and not the pursuit of my bucket list – was what carried me through the hardest moments of my life.
What Documentation Actually Did For Me (And Can Do for You)
This platform has been my salvation in so many ways. In grief, it’s provided me with profound gratitude. In heartbreak, it’s given me a very clear perspective. In depression, it’s reminded me of all that I’m capable of. The best part? You don’t even need a platform. You don’t need to publish anything, and you don’t need to consider yourself a writer. You just need a place to put your life down.
2010: Writing Became a Lifeline
In March of 2010, I was feeling a little lost. I’d only recently become aware of just how toxic the people I’d chosen to surround myself with were. I cut ties with four of my closest friends, including my boyfriend at the time, and created a blog (2147Miles.com) to document my upcoming move from Idaho to Tennessee. I’d unknowingly created my very own stable emotional anchor when my real-life support system fell apart, not knowing at the time just how much documenting my life would become the thing I could rely on when the people closest to me weren’t exactly who I thought they were.
2014: The Regret That’s Still Teaching Me
In 2014, I chose to throw away my childhood journals. I think I didn’t want to remember myself so insecure, or maybe I didn’t want others to remember me that way. Regardless, I’ve come to regret this on so many levels. Deleting my past erased more than memories, it took away the chance to reflect – entry by entry – on what I learned in each moment, it took away my ability to have gratitude for just how much I’ve changed.
What I really want to say here is just how much I’ve learned that all of our stories matter regardless. Your story matters even when you’re insecure, uncertain, or not proud of who you were. If that person did not exist, neither would you. You are who you are because that person was who they were. That’s kind of huge.
The Evolution of My Blog
Six years in, I decided I wanted my platform to hone in on what I believed to be the sole reason I could bounce back from failure so quickly: my bucket list. Thus, 2147Miles became Bucket List Bound, and instead of simply sharing my adventures and accomplishments, I was now also teaching others the importance of personal goals and what you’re capable of once you know specifically what it is you want in life.
My platform started changing as I did: career pivots, self doubt, marriage, motherhood, and in the middle of each shift, I secretly hated my platform. I looked at each website transition as a failure, or as a sign that I was a “lost soul”. I felt like I couldn’t get anything to click; it was like trying on new clothes and never feeling like any of it was really me. Looking at it now, I realize that documenting my life is how I process life. Every season of my life left a trail, even if it was a just new website home page. I could either own my platform season by season, while being embarrassed that I’d changed my mind so many times, or drop it completely and never fully grasp the direction in which I was supposed to go.
The Quiet Years: Writing Took a Backseat
I remember very clearly in 2020, I had a moment when it felt like what I wanted for my platform was childish. I thought that no one was going to take me seriously if I chose to pursue a blog called Bucket List Bound. And instead of transitioning to something else, I chose to drop blogging completely. My need for clarity was even more clouded by this decision, and it didn’t take me very long to realize that in not documenting my life, I’d abandoned myself on a level I never had before.
The 2020s: Returning With Intention
After I had my children, something shifted. I knew I had to get back to documenting my life, but I didn’t fully understand what that meant. I didn’t want it to be solely about motherhood, and I didn’t want to it be just about me. Then, an old friend of mine reached out asking if I could help her write her autobiography, and within a few hours, everything changed.
This wasn’t the first time someone had reached out to me to help them with something like this. This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten excited about documenting someone else’s world. And the weirdest part was the realization that every iteration of my website had been about documenting life, even when I wasn’t blogging on my platform. My photography business? I think that one’s obvious. My marketing business? That would be a form of documenting for your business.
It clicks with my obsession with autobiographies, self help articles, and the concept of a bucket list completely altering someone’s reality.
It clicks with The Creating Me Legacy Journals I made last year, and the series additions that still weigh on my mind.
It clicks with the photography gig I obsessed over in 2020 when I got to document the operation of a local mill, and the demolition of it just one year later. It clicks with the 5-hour legacy video I created interviewing my grandparents about their entire lives, one question at a time. I was documenting the lives of others to fill the emptiness that came with not documenting mine, and it felt incredible.
And this realization isn’t just about what I want to do with my life, but with the fact that had I not documented my life, I wouldn’t be making all of these connections. I wouldn’t have the undeniable proof that I’m right where I’m supposed to be in this moment in time. I was never lost. Each iteration of my platform connected me to my identity, my purpose, to rediscovery and gave me stability during the chaos.
Documenting your life is a choice that anyone can make, for free. So, pick up that pen, grab that keyboard, make that voice memo. YOUR STORY MATTERS, even if you’re the only one who will ever see it in writing.
So, Here We Are.
My mocktail is gone, the fireplace is off, and I’m seconds from heading to bed. I’m smiling because I truly believe in manifestation and inner alignment, as cheesy as it all may sound. I’ve got something here. And this moment didn’t just magically appear; it was earned year after year of documenting my way back to me.
What Does It All Mean?
Documenting life isn’t about perfection, but about surviving the imperfect. It helps you witness your growth. It brings clarity you simply cannot get any other way.
This isn’t about becoming a blogger or a YouTube influencer, it’s about becoming someone who actually consumes their own life.
Ways To Start Today:
• Write down just once sentence per day
• Answer a simple prompt each day: “What happened today and how did it make me feel?”
• Write down your monthly snapshot
• Record a voice memo on hard days
• Make a list of things future you will want to remember about right now
• Take a few photos and give them short captions
• Write a single journal prompt each week
Start small. Start messy. Just start.
Your Story Matters Because Your Life Matters
I remember telling someone in high school that I wanted to write my autobiography one day. They asked me what I would have to say, and I suddenly felt invalidated. What did I have to say?
Even as a high schooler I was worthy of sharing my story, AND it had value, and so did yours. We are all learning so many different lessons, and what we’ve learned is not only valuable to others, but to us.
You don’t need a platform.
You don’t need confidence.
You don’t need to feel ready.
You don’t need to publish your story publicly.
You just need the courage to write it down.
I never realized that I was building a life raft each time I wrote part of my life down, but I can tell you this with absolute certainty: documenting your life will change the way you experience it.
Keep me posted.
Amy