OMG! Journaling.
Prologue. First, Merry Christmas! Second. Holy moly, my last blog post was in February. I admit. I’ve had a hard time getting back into the writing-sphere. It has just been a tough year. After managing to avoid getting sick for two years, we (in my household) all got COVID. Twice. Once in the winter and again in the summer. Then in the fall both my daughters got the flu. I mean, how deflating to the soul is all this sickness? We did everything right. We got all the vaccines. (And it helped to shorten the illness.) But it’s what the whole world has been dealing with. We are not so different. Just feels like it. Now, I’m happy to report we are all healthy (knocking on wood), and enjoying the holiday season together! Which is so important to me!!! All this to say it’s been hard to get motivated to write a blog post (or having a social media presence), but here we goooo….
All-right, who remembers writing in your oh-so-private-and-secret diary when you were a kid? The diary had a lock and key and everything! And you wrote whatever an 8 year old considers super private. I always started to write. And then I’d run out of things to write about. As a middle- and high- schooler, I had more to say. Sometimes it was dark, depressing stuff. Teenager-y stuff. But I wrote more in those days. In college, WHO HAD TIME TO WRITE??? Always studying and researching and writing long papers left no time for personal journaling. But on the other side of college, I wrote a lot in my journals thinking someday, someone would want to read about my life. And all these journals would go in my “library”. I even took to writing poems. They were ridiculously funny, in my opinion. I mean, intentionally funny. So it was the worst poetry ever, but so fun to write. I was really inspired in those days. I’ve since stopped writing silly poems. And I stopped writing journals all-together. This is why.
I started noticing that I was writing a lot of my dark, depressing feelings, and about the events that triggered those feelings. This in order to get them out of my system. And every time I wrote about those moments, I was re-living them. And re-feeling all those dark feelings. And then months later, I would re-read those moments, and I felt dark all over again. So it was perpetuating negative feelings. It became completely unhelpful to write down all my feelings. So I stopped. And, just like that. I felt less weighed down. Negative feelings and events continued to happen (because such is life sometimes), but only once. Not over and over in the form of writing it down and then re-reading. Does that make sense?
Then I realized that I was also losing the positive moments in my life because I wasn’t writing about those either. I didn’t want to lose the positive things. Things I would want to remember. But I did not go back to journaling. Instead, I intuitively started taking photos with my oh-so-convenient smart phone. (Like everyone else.) Especially once my children were born. So. Many. Photos. Of my girls. I’ve often felt guilty for not journaling anymore. Especially since so many business coaches and therapists suggest and encourage journaling. But, I’m here to tell you, I have not missed journaling since I stopped. And replacing it with photos has really worked for me. I don’t linger on negative thoughts, and I’m able to see a beautiful sunset (as an example) and record it as a photo instead of writing about it.
My point to all of this. I suppose I’m forgiving myself for not journaling like all the experts say I should. And instead focusing on beautiful memories by using photography.
Now. Bullet journaling (or BuJo as the insiders like to call it). I have not tried it. And I’m not sure it’s for me either. But there are some awesome artists out there that make bullet journaling look so fun! I’ve spent hours watching these artists set up their monthly bullet journals! Of course bullet journaling is nothing like writing in your diary. It’s not story-telling in words. It’s more like having a planner or an organizer. You can also include important events in your bullet journal, but it doesn’t have to be a long story about your thoughts and feelings. More important for me, as an artist, it can include DOODLES and SKETCHES and brain dumps and ideas and dreams and whatever….! I find this a much more fun practice. Something I can get behind.
So my favorite bullet journaler…. [And in the spirit of supporting female-owned small businesses (especially artists).]
Shayda Campbell out of Canada…. She is all about the “perfectly imperfect”. And she’s just such a gem and a joy to watch and follow. She has different themes for her yearly bullet journals. Last year it was “flowers of the world”. And yes, I watched all 12 months of her bujo set ups. So I’m a little obsessed with her work. :D This year her theme is “folklore”. And I can’t wait to see what all she has in store. You can also find her on her website https://www.shaydacampbell.com/. And you can also support her on patreon https://www.patreon.com/shaydacampbell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTcx62Q4k8M
And we’ve reached the end of this blog post. Thank you for reading to this point. Wishing everyone an excellent and restful holiday season!