Journals and Journaling

This blog post covers journal pictures, the question of indexing and my personal journaling history and thoughts.

Journal Pictures

My private journals tend to be directed at God, probably since I did so much prayer journaling in the past. Below are my journals to see how many and the varied styles there are.

I have about 5 main journal divided by topics and 2 extra journals, one for creative content ideas and another one that is for my thoughts on commonplacing/Personal Knowledge System.

The main five are:

1. Relationships: (interactions and maintaining relationships friends and family, old and new)
2. Ideas: My Creative Work / Business journal
3. Writing Platform: My thoughts and activities in building my platform
4. SCA Journey: SCA is a medieval education organization
5. Main Journal: for miscellaneous thoughts and processing of various things.

I finished my main journal which was an Unload journal before switching to my new blue cherry blossom moon notebook.

The Unload journal is a plain notebook that has a wheelbarrow and the word “Unload” on it. It was given to me by someone and I found it useful. I think of both as a catch all.

Extras:

The red cardinal is for my time capsule yearly memory list / health stats, Rabbit Room one is for my writing ideas for my blog/Substack and other writings, The pink journal is currently for commonplacing notes.

Journaling History

I used to not journal growing up. I remember one classroom assignment where we had to journal and were allowed to staple a piece of paper onto our entry. I remember doing that because it was private. I wasn’t fond of the teacher nor the assignment.

Decades later a friend gave me those little notebooks and I ended up noting down my Bible Plans from my YouVersion app and logging my Bible time. Looking in the little pink notebook it started June 2019. It was a daily log that expanded into more details and notebooks.

I rarely look at them, yet they are on my bookshelf. I finished eight books Daily Devotions in August of 2022. I’m trying to piece together when I started truly journaling.

For a couple of years I had a loose leaf paper prayer journal that I ended up buying four inch binders for. Then eventually that got overwhelming, so I stopped.

I have a spiral bound prayer journal with a starting date of June 28, 2022. This notebook was more sporadically written in.

Then in August and September 2023 I started my relationship journal and writing platform journals respectively. I shifted away from the daily writings to periodic entries whenever I had something I wanted to note down.

Writing this post prompted me to seek out the timeline of my journaling past.

I’m content to journal as I wish. No one reads my entries. I periodically will review some of my recent books. It’s interesting to see the progression of my journey.

It all started with keeping a daily devotion log.

Journal Thoughts:

I find it very helpful to have different buckets to put different areas of my life in. Some people probably prefer to have one journal. Many of those tend to take their journal with them. I mostly write at night so all my journals stay home.

I like pretty journals. I wasn’t to fond of the Unload plainness. I ended up looking for classier budget friendly notebooks for my replacement journals. Some I bought, others I got as gifts.

I’ve gotten back into Reddit so I can subscribe to journaling and commonplace books subreddits. I’m really liking it so far.

The Reddit users who post entries for us to read I have mixed feelings on. I don’t really like that they put out to public some of their personal stuff. Some of them are very beautifully artistically arranged. Others do quite a bit of artwork in theirs. I just write. No drawings. I’m content that way.

Over the years, especially since 2023, I’ve really gotten into a stream of conscious writing style. I imagine I’m talking with you through my written words kinda like a text or social media post.

I tend to keep some stuff private, even when I journal. Some prefer to have a space where they can verbally process their thoughts unfiltered. I do some of that. But anything truly private I tend to infer or hint at for my future self.

I think journaling has been helpful to process and organize my mind. Its helped me see the progress I’ve made towards my goals and dreams as well as prioritizing my relationships with friends and family members. It is also helpful to chronicle ideas and things I want to do to see if I really want to do them or if I get them done. Can’t do everything.

I don’t know if my family or friends will want to keep my journals after I’m gone. I’m not sure if I want them destroyed, thrown out or donated to the American Diary Association. I should decide what I want to do someday. For now, I’ll keep journaling as I wish until I choose to stop.

Indexing

At the time of the writing of this post, I’m undecided if I want to index my journals or not. There’s clear benefits to doing this. But I never numbered the pages before and am reluctant to do so due to lack of heading space on the entries in some the journals. The heading space is taken up by the time, day of the week and date of the entry. At the bottom I usually put down my end time. I learned that there is a online indexing tool for journals.

Wrap Up

I don’t think journaling is for everyone. But I do find it helpful as a writer and for thinking things through. Its enjoyable for me.

Some people have special fountain pens and prefer premier journals with heavier paper to handle the fountain pen inks. I’m not at that level. I’m much more content with pretty journal covers that bring beauty to my room.

Vehicles to bring meaning and coherence to my life. The beauty of words and artistic covers reflecting what I value and understand.