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Occasionally on Own Your Beauty, I've mentioned pulling out your journal to do some of the prompts, which may have led you to believe that I am an avid journaler. You would be correct. However! Despite appearances, I only started journaling in earnest for about a year and half now. Before that, I would not have been caught dead journaling. You see, originally, I assumed journaling was about writing very lofty thoughts in beautifully bound journals every single day, for the purposes of baring one's darkest and most emotionally-wrenching secrets from the depths of one's soul for all posterity. You know, like Anne Frank, except more profound.
You can see why perhaps I found the thought of journaling a little daunting.
And while, obviously, there's nothing wrong with journaling in that way, a conversation with my friend Jen Lee a year and a half ago made me realize that there really is no right or wrong way to journal at all; and in fact, it might possibly be far more rewarding, and freeing even, to look at journaling as merely a way to capture the ephemera of your life. By journaling this way -- just capturing your messy, imperfect life, with no thought about how you want the final product to look or read -- the result, of course, is that you'll have an accidentally beautiful record of your life and times. Since that conversation, I've journaled almost every day. And honestly? It has changed my life. My journals have kept me very organized with respect to my daily schedule and life but have also provided me lots of inspiration for my work as well -- things I'd like to photograph or write, or projects I'd like to tackle, or even future goals to whch to aspire.
Over the months, my journals has evolved from very simple books to something quite a bit more complex, but each time I've added something new, it's just been about whatever I've felt like putting in the pages, as opposed to What Is Supposed To Be Recorded In A Journal. And so, today, I thought I'd share with you the various sections in my journal, from the very basic to the more elaborate. If you don't journal, as we begin the new year, I'd strongly encourage you to give it a go, and just see what comes of it. You can do as many of these levels that you want, or just stick with Level 1 -- it's entirely up to you. And you never know: just starting a practice of handwriting things down might help you discover and more deeply appreciate your Beautiful Different.
The Rules and the Tools of a Journal
As I mentioned above, journaling should be completely freeform and generally rule-free; that said, the only rule for myself (and I would suggest, for anyone just starting out), is that you are not allowed to rip out any pages. In other words, if you make a mistake, or you try doodling something you don't like, or you don't think it's neat enough, or heck, of someone rests their coffee cup on the open page leaving a ring stain, it stays in the book. I know this might feel very frustrating at first, but just trust me on this. Years from now, after you've forgotten about it, you'll come across the scribble, or the coffee stain, and might actually be charmed by this.
So, since this is my rule, I never buy spiral-bound journals, since the temptation to rip out a page is too strong. Instead, I buy tightly-bound journals -- Moleskines are great (hard to rip out pages), and I started using those, but then I found a more eco-friendly version and have been using those instead. And I always get the unlined versions, so that I can write as big or small as I want, but it doesn't matter, really. And also, since you're going to want to have it on you as much as possible (you'll see why, below), be sure to get a size that's big enough to write in, but portable enough to throw
