The embodiment community is open again to new membership

[pegkerr]

EMBODIMENT PAPER JOURNAL PROJECT 2008 | LEARN MORE + JOIN


This is an interesting community to watch, because people do such imaginative things with their journals. As I've noted before, I've been keeping a daily journal since the age of 14 (and I'm 47 now). I'm such a creature of habit about it: I always buy the same type, the At-A-Glance Standard Diary that has one page a day:

Standard Diary

But, as I've noted several times this past year, I've had some unusual trouble this year keeping it up. I've skipped days at a time, which is something I never used to do. My entries feel dry and uninteresting, and I continually fight the feeling, "I've said this all a million times before, so why repeat it?" Partly it's the depression, of course, and perhaps part of the trouble is that I'm keeping this LiveJournal, too, and the two sort of compete for my energy. And frankly, the LiveJournal is rather more fun, because I can add links and pictures and get comments back. But I still would like to keep up a paper diary, too.

I wonder whether trying to get boldly experimental, like some of the folks at the embodiment community do, would help. I've never considered myself much of a visual artist, but perhaps if I added more of an element of play to the paper version, that might help?

Do you keep a paper journal as well as your LiveJournal? How long have you done so? How do the two different journals perform different roles for you? Why do you like to keep both? What do you do to keep the paper journal interesting for yourself? How have your journaling habits changed? (As you got older, your life changed, as you added LiveJournal, etc.)

Comments

[chamisa.livejournal.com]

I've been keeping a paper journal since I was in 6th grade (I'm 39 now). But since I started my LiveJournal in 2004, I've noticed my paper journaling drop more and more and more...to the point where I just realized that I barely wrote in it at all this year or last!

It kinda freaks me out to realize this because I used to be really into writing in my journals, and it was really important to me. It still is, even though I don't do it right now. I treasure my paper journals and re-read them every now and then. I used to love picking out a new journal to replace the old one--I'm not a creature of habit as you are in that regard; I like having something new and different, as it makes it more fun for me.

I joined embodiment in 2006, began journaling in a gorgeous leather-bound book I bought in Venice, Italy, tried doing all kinds of mixed media things in it...kept it up for three months or so...then it all just fell apart and it became more of a chore, a duty, than a pleasure.

Also, I think that while the journal I chose to write in was gorgeous to look at, it was a bit difficult to actually write in (the binding is tight and doesn't open all the way and I didn't want to damage it), so that inhibited my desire to use it.

So, I don't know what my problem is. I don't know if all this paper journal drop-off is because I've gotten older, because I have nothing "exciting" to write about, because what was "exciting" to write about was almost too intense to deal with and I was being all avoidant, because I got bored, because I have a LiveJournal, because my handwriting sucks and I can type ten billion times faster than I can write...I just don't know.

I do know that whenever I checked in at embodiment to see what others were doing and saw how dedicated and creative some people were with their journals it made me feel even worse about not doing it myself, so I stopped checking after a while. So lame of me to feel that way, but there you have it.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I have been keeping a paper journal since the early 80s. It serves me as a memory prosthetic more than anything else, and also as the one page per day that is the only writing-by-hand I do with any regularity. I like much the same sort of page-per-day journal as you picture above, save that it grows ever harder to find ones that aren't aimed primarily at a business context where half a page for Saturday and half a page for Sunday suffices. What keeps it interesting for me would appear to basically be how keeping it up-to-date eases my OCD tendencies.

My livejournal takes the form it does mostly to save me having to put the same paragraph of any news or interesting thoughts into email to a couple of dozen different friends every time anything happens, as well as helping me keep up with and be kept up with by acquaintances with whom a mail correspondence would probably not work; I also like the way that having a space that's mine has acted to allow cross-linking of circles of friends I have met through different shared interests, there are people I've known for ages would get on but to whom I would be the only point of contact, and lj allows that to happen in a natural and unforced manner.

[franticgoddess.livejournal.com]

I've been keeping a paper journal since I was about 6, and I've had my livejournal since I was 14 (I'm 21 now). I do notice a shift in my paper journaling habits once I got a LJ, although I've been regularly writing in both though the years. At first my paper journals were everything: day-to-day activities, doodles, thoughts on life, things I thought were interesting, fan fiction before I knew what it was and everything inbetween. My paper journals also took a bit of a hiatus in my early LJ days. I ended up using them more for personal fiction and fan fiction rather than as a daily journal.

In the past few years though, that's changed again. My paper journals have become much more personal but at the same time much less detail-oriented (as far as details of my life, what I do every day, that kind of thing). My entries are often very similar to those at jr_nal or embodiment (some of them are here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/allthishappiness/sets/72157600090776539/) although they've been heavily edited and such post-photos). My paper journal now is much more visual, and since I abandoned art classes and art school it really serves as my outlet for those kind of creative thingies and arty bits I miss. I really enjoy my paper journals. I had a hard time filling journals with words only, but filling them up in any way possible has really helped--it's also really relaxing!

[pazlazuli.livejournal.com]

I've kept paper journals at different periods of my life, usually it happens in spurts... (just like Livejournal, he he he). Journaling on a daily (or semi-daily) basis I have found out is unrealistic for me since it is mostly a matter of what time I have available. Some weeks I am busier than others...

[aome.livejournal.com]

I kept a paper journal from age 10 or so, with increasing regularity once I started high school, until I met Will. Then - suddenly - my evening time wasn't my own anymore, and I just fell off the bandwagon. I started LJ because I wanted to get back into journaling and no longer had the patience and time to write by hand. However, abigail89 just made me this beautiful leather-bound journal with gorgeous artsy paper, and I'm debating how best to use it.

[nanonano.livejournal.com]

What an interesting community. I'm always fascinated how people turn their journals into mini-art projects. I've never had that urge with mine. The most I've done is use a different color ink. Wonder if it's a verbal vs visual thing or something else entirely.

I've kept paper journals in spurts. I'll do a large entry to cover the stretch I've missed, so the idea of journaling each day would be a challenge. I've tried to keep them regularly for trips, so I can remember things I've seen or done. I really got into the habit when I discovered Moleskines, although sometimes the paper is too thin to handle my fountain pen love.

I usually leave my personal rants for paper journals. The occasional job story will leak through. LJ is more interacting with my friends and letting them know what I'm doing or going through. It's more of a conversation, rather than just a "Dear Diary" experience, if that makes sense?

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

I keep a paper journal independent of my posts, public and private, here. My thoughts organize themselves differently when I am handwriting as opposed to typing. I have thirty or forty by now, even after the post office lost some a few years ago.

My journals are sporadic. Years will go by with a dozen or two posts total, and then I'll have a six-month period where I fill hundreds of pages. The longest it's ever taken to fill 196 pages is three years. The shortest is three months. I don't use anything with dates because a single day can either have nothing or fifteen pages associated with it.

Occasionally I sketch. In the past I have filled them with ephemera -- tickets to movies, business cards, menus from restaurants, gift cards, pictures from magazines. I also include lists of things to do, possible Christmas lists, etc. That's always a lot of fun to go back to, because it gives a much more complete view of the days. It does mean they don't look quite as tidy on the shelf, since they get sort of fat.

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

I keep both a paper journal and LJ. I've kept a paper journal since I was 15. I no longer write in it every day like I used to, but I still write pretty often. It's very clear if you look back through my paper journal that it took a severe hit when I started LJ - and even more so when I discovered LJBook.com so I didn't feel a need to have records of things both places.

I use my LJ for every day things, memes, issues where I'd like feedback etc. My paper journal is partly for more personal stuff (even though my LJ is mostly no holds bared there are still some things I'd rather not share) and partly for things so specific that it'd either require a LONG background story for anybody else to get, or nobody else would find it interesting anyway.

My language is different the two places too. And not just because I tend to write more Danish in my paper journal, but it's also less structured. When I write on LJ I'm very conscious that I'm writing to other people - and I guess I see LJ more as open letters than as a diary - whereas my paper journal is for me and me only.

Thanks for asking. It was interesting to get to put this into words. I may write a journal entry about this myself, if you don't mind me copying you :)

Journal

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

When you write your journal, who do you imagine to be your audience?

B

Re: Journal

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

My paper journal, you mean? From the beginning, my only audience has been, for the most part, me. As far as I know, I've always lived with people who respected the privacy of my journal and did not read them. I always wrote thinking only that I would be the only person to read them.

It wasn't until an adult and had been writing in them for years that I really considered that other people could read them, and might, some day. I had wondered whether they might be bequeathed to a historical museum or something, either as a bit of personal history for a typical midwesterner, if anyone would be interested, or if (as I sometimes hoped in my most private musings, although the hope has certainly faded quite a bit) I became a well-known enough writer that someone might be interested in my personal papers, as part of a literary estate (graduate students, others of that ilk, etc.).

The understanding I have come to in the end is that the journals are mine, and mine alone, as long as I am alive. After I die, Rob can read them, and the girls can read them after the age of 21, with the caveat that they understand that the journals were always meant, during my lifetime, for my eyes alone, and so the thoughts within are extremely candid and blunt.

After that, I suppose it would depend on whether any institution might have any interest in them, but it would be the decision for Rob and/or the girls (unless I find some institution to which I'd bequeath them upon my death. Haven't found one yet.

Re: Journal

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm not asking my question properly, or maybe I'm asking a question that makes sense to me but not to you. I'm not asking who will be able to read your journal. I am asking who, at the time you are writing, is in your head as your reader.

When I write, for example, my reader is an abstract entity I think of as my "audience." My audience may have characteristics -- computer literate, interested, smart, general, etc -- but they're never personified.

It doesn't sound like you're writing to your future grown children. ("September 16, 2003: Ah, that's why she was so pissed off in the afternoon.") Are you writing to your future self? Can someone write without thinking about their readers at all?

B

Re: Journal

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

No, your question makes sense to me. Truly, the only person I "write to" when I write in my journal is myself. I codify the meta-thoughts that are hanging around in my brain about each day and put them down on paper. But they are still only meant for me, for today, not even (I think) my future self.

That is why I have said that more than anything else, what my journal has done the most for me is to make me self-aware/self-reflective.

Re: Journal

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

This is fascinating to me. The few times I've tried starting a journal I've failed almost from the beginning because I never had an audience in my head. I tried writing for "posterity"; that didn't work. I tried writing to myself in the future -- reminding myself of things I had forgotten -- and that didn't work either. It never made sense to me to write to myself in the present, as you are doing, so that didn't work . So I would give up, about as quickly as I started.

One of your advantages is that you started so young, before this kind of nonsense invades your brain. By the time you thought to figure out who you were writing for, it was already habit. I don't know.

B

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

When I was in junior high, I read Writing Down the Bones and bought a fountain pen or two and a notebook. And I wrote a lot. I've never reread any of it; I doubt it's universally legible. It was a very stream of consciousness way to keep a journal. Eventually, I stopped.
Sometimes I try to keep a physical journal. It mostly falters. I think my Livejournal is too trivial, and I should make more posts of substance, or possibly draft them in a journal, or put the trivia in a journal, and instead... nope. I made it two entries into a bananapaper one (too spongey, too tall, but a gift and it makes nice notepaper) and not a bit more.
I also have a journal for a roleplaying game conducted through letters. I use my same pen and everything, but my handwriting is different-- much more slanted and pointy than my usual (it reminds me of the difference between eastern and western Arabic calligraphy, where 'western' means Spain). I have trouble writing my page a day, but not nearly as much as I do writing a page a day of my own. My life is not interesting. I call home once a week and find myself wanting to just listen to other people's news, because mine is almost always 'no change, save to the internet'.
Between that and the fact that I require an audience, real or implied, paper journals aren't working for me. The notebooks are too pretty, the paper is very seldom right, the bindings are impossible, and no one's listening except me.

[teacherla.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to unmake my old way of keeping my paper journal, actually, because it had become solipsistic to the point that I couldn't bear to reread it and see how distorted a picture of my own past I was making. By recording a lot of temporary irritations I'd immortalized the kind of thing that otherwise tends to fall out of memory.

My first paper journal that lasted more than a day or two was a pink hardback book that had come with an offer to join a "Just for Girls" reading club. Boy did I want to join that club, but my mother wouldn't pay for it (heh) and sent back all the "free gifts" except for the diary. In it I recorded that I was reading the Arabian Nights, that Mom drove too fast when she was mad and that my brother was a pain.

I started keeping a "notebook" more consistently in high school. Most of what went into it was story fragments. I started some of the stories over from the beginning more than a dozen times, only finished a couple of them. I would think of a good starting scene and then find myself at a loss.

When I found Livejournal, it was through a writer-friend of mine who wrote long, detailed, engaging entries. I hopped on thinking that now I'd learn to write for other people. Didn't happen; in fact I wrote more moany stuff for LJ than I had for the paper journal, and ended up embarrassed about the ill-advised revelations I'd attempted to force on my reading list. So now I'm aiming for laconic.

The paper notebook I'm trying to make the other half of my academic career now. However, I'm still far too wordy and pedantic because I can't stand to have notes that aren't self-explanatory, so I write almost every thought out longhand. Indirectly, this is probably the reason that my handwriting is so consistent (people comment favorably on my handwriting, but to me it looks like a SLOPPY MESS THAT MUST BE CURBED). I am trying to cut down on the number of references to "I" and "me" per page, but dang it's hard (I don't have much of a family at the moment to write about). Sometimes I catch myself analyzing my friends, and I try not to do that too much either.

So...it's an incorrigible habit. I have a shelf, maybe two, of notebooks going back to that ten-year-old edition.