My 2014 Journal

Wayyyy back in 2011, I found this book in an antique store.  It is called "Dr. Colwell's Daily Log for Physicians".

I believe they first started making them in 1928.  I found this description of the book on the Internet: "This work describes a convenient method for keeping books for the physician. There are pages at the end for a waiting list for obstetrical records and likewise an annual summary which can be used readily for making out income tax returns. It is an altogether practical book for the physician's desk." (from The Jama Network)  Believe it or not, Patterson Dental still sells this type of log book (in a much more compact size, they are no longer 500+ pages!), although the price isn't readily available to the casual Internet reader.

According to the title page, my book belonged to John B. Sullivan M.D.

and many of the pages have entries detailing his daily appointments from that year, all of which have been entered in pencil.

Some of the pages summarizing expenses have been filled out (in February, he paid $5.00 for laundry, $10.35 for a new car battery and $16.31 for his telephone) but many of the record keeping pages, such as those entitled "Monthly Surgical Records" and "Narcotics Dispensed", are (sadly) blank.  Imagine how interesting those details might have been to read!

Did you know that calendar years repeat?  When I bought the book, I looked up 1947 and was excited to realize that it was going to repeat in 2014, with the same day/date combinations.  So I decided to wait until this year to use this book. I tried using it in 2012 but it just didn't feel right somehow.  I made daily entries for a week or two in January but eventually stopped.  It has a black, hard leather cover and measures about one inch wide on the spine.  The pages are held in place with two bolts that can be easily unscrewed if I want to work with loose pages.  Now my dilemma is this:  should I use up the log book by filling some or all of each of the daily pages this year or should I try to use it on a daily basis for the next few years, by just writing a short blurb each day?  So far, my entries look like this:

It might be kind of fun to have a record to compare what I did each day on a year-to-year basis.  I can't quite decide, I'll have to see how it goes as I get more used to it.  Practically speaking, I doubt that I'd have the time or the inclination to do an entire page every day, although here's a sample of what I did on January 1st:

Tune in tomorrow when I'll be describing what else I'll be doing with this book this year!