July 14, 2016

Do you journal?

This post is part of a 30 in 30 blog experiment, where I committed to writing 30 posts in 30 days with minimal planning between June 20, 2016 and July 20, 2016.

Do you keep a daily journal? I'm inconsistent at it at best, but I'm trying to get better.

I've tried a myriad of methods over the past couple of years, but none of them ever stuck:
  • Morning Pages from THE ARTIST'S WAY
  • Lynda Barry's journal technique SYLLABUS: NOTES FROM AN ACCIDENTAL PROFESSOR
  • Straight up journaling (like a diary)
  • I created my own hybrid day planner/journal and used that for a year
  • Austin Kleon's STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST JOURNAL
Drawn by the hand design and artistic style of the bullet journalists on youtube, I decided to try my hand at it. What I ended up doing is a bit of all the journal techiques I've tried in the past all twisted up into one.

I create a page for the week (shown above) with a place for me to write down the good stuff for the week, any special events, to dos I'd like to accomplish, a list of what I'm reading that week and my goals.

So far this just sounds like regular bullet journaling, but I take my daily journal entries much deeper. I don't really need a daily to do list because I'm using TeuxDeux for home and dapulse for work, but I do like having a record of my day from what I accomplished to the podcasts I listened to and any notes I took, to story ideas and what I ate. If' I'm having a tough day, I might write about it like a traditional journal. Or I'll draw pictures if something really caught my eye.

It's become a freeform journal along the lines of Austin Kleon's method with a little Lynda Barry and Julia Cameron mixed in. I even take a moment to think about how I feel when I wake up and what's on my mind in more of a bullet point kind of way if I find I'm distracted.

It seems to be working for me at the moment. I like how I can turn to it whenever I need to think rather than at specific times during the day. And I like having a record of what I was doing on a specific day and how it correlated to my thoughts.

Do you keep a journal? What method do you like the best?

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