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

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