Getting Started by Jumping In

The easy way to get started is to select one of the commonly-available blank books and jump right in.  If you are not sure exactly how you want to define your topic, ... well ... leave it vague and open, but just write what is on your mind.  After you have tried out several ideas and directions, you will find some sense of direction on how you want to proceed, and you will begin to develop your content and style as you go along, letting your intuitions be your guide.  Certainly, that's how we let ourselves learn.

In any case, here are some ideas to help the process along.

Use a Bound Book:  Many people like to write their journal on their computer (or typewriter).  They keep  their printed pages into some sort of binder or a ringed notebook or spiral pad.  In the short term, this sounds good.  At least it is getting something done. 

However, in the long term, or even sooner, the holes start to wear, and tear, the pages turn ragged, even with careful use.  If you want to leave your work to family members, it will not last very long.  Many libraries or historical organizations would value your contributions, but they may have conditions on acceptance, such as only bound material.  And binding these pages can be expensive, assuming that they are in a condition to be bound.  If you are doubtful about this advice, then just think of a high school or college student who keeps his notes in just such a binder or notebook - they are usually in tatters by the end of the school year, much less five or ten years later. 

There is one other option to consider:  learn how to bind your pages yourself.  The members of our  journaling classes learn simple bookbinding, so that they can save money and can make their books any way they want to.  In the Bookbinding classes, they learn case binding, Japanese binding, coptic binding and book repair.  They often come to the sessions, never having met these skills before, and in 2013 at the State Fair, they took 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes in the handmade books category.  And for a situation with printed or types individual pages, please do consider learning Japanese Bookbinding as a possible solution.

Some Ideas for a Purchased Blank Book:  Every person's journal is the result of individual choices and expression.  It represents you.  So here are some ideas to consider right from the start, and they are fun!

• Make a Title Page (maybe include start date, your name, etc.)
• Next, leave 2-3 blank pages in case you later need to add something you never knew you would need
• Then, on a new page, write a paragraph or two, very short, about what you think you are going to do and why you want to do it.  OF COURSE, yes, you can change your mind, meander into other things, whatever... this is just a launching pad to get the juices going.
• Skip another 1-2 pages at the front (just in case you might need them later).  This is where you will  put your first entry.
• For now, though, go to the very back of the journal.
• Don't do anything to the very last page... but take the next two pages in.  Cut them on a diagonal (the high side at the spine, the low side of the diagonal on the open side).  Tape the two cut pages together along the bottom and outside edges, making a pocket to store things you might like to keep for later use.
• Now, again, skip a couple of pages backward into the journal, and...
• Rule the pages to make a future Index.  (This method is invented by CR just as one way to do it - you might have your own way )  This Index will take anywhere from 2-4 pages, depending on how big your journal pages are.  In any case, on each page, divide the space into 4 quarters, 2 on top, 2 on the bottom.  At the top of each quarter, Write each letter of the alphabet (yes, "A", "B", "C"....), and since some letters are not used as much as others, you can probably combine Q and U, or X-Y-Z.  The advantage is that if you date your journaling entries, then you can index them by date and do fast look-ups when you are searching for something.  (Example:  Suppose you sketched a pattern for a  quilt block in your journal sometime last spring, and now you want to copy it out for your cousin.  You look in your Index under "Q" (for Quilt) or "D" (for "Daisy") and you see an entry which says "Daisy Block", 04/23/2012" and zip, right to the date April 23, 2012, and there it is.  And if, like most of us, you eventually have well over 20 volumes to search, something like that saves a lot of time.  (Note:  I do my indexing every week or 2 so it's not a big job later.) 
• Consider a New Journal Volume & Color Every Year:  It might be good to change the color of your journal cover each year, with the date on the spine, so that they are easy and orderly on the shelf, the the different colors help the eye when searching for something.

Some Words of Encouragement:

•  "Choose to plan for the future.  Write your troubles on a slip of paper and burn it.  Now make a list of what you [really] want to do..."  [Alice Hoffman]
• " ... because we don't know [when we will die], we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.  How many times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it?  Perhaps four or five times more.  Perhaps not even that.  How many more times will you watch the full moon rise?  Perhaps twenty.  And yet it seems limitless."  [Paul Bowles, "The Sheltering Sky"]  
• If you write down the things which have meaning for you, it belongs to you, and in a journal, you can share it with your family, your community, the world.  This special memory.  It lives forever.  [CR] 

 The Cornerhouse.

Diaries and Journals

A diary is generally understood to be something like a daily record, especially a personal record of events, experiences, and observations, which in many cases can also be a journal.  However, for our convenience here, a journal has a much broader scope.  It is flexible beyond the diary, and can be used to record more than just daily events, happenings, or opinions.  Of course, diaries can do that too - but it's more convenient to know the distinctions we are using for later consistency.  

With this in mind, then, there can be all kinds of journals, according to the needs of the journalist.  It rather depends on the interest of the person keeping the journal.  If, for example, the person is an avid gardener, she might keep a gardening journal (and many people do).  Someone may be interested in cooking and recipes, so they keep a cooking journal with favorite recipes.  I keep a dream journal.  A musician or actor might maintain a career journal, which would be more that a memory scrapbook, as it might be a record of how the creative process unfolded from beginning through the rehearsal process, to the end, including the problems encountered and how they were (or were not) resolved.  I know a man who is an enthusiastic hunter, and has kept a detailed journal of his winter hunting trips.  In it, he records the date, time, place, weather conditions, equipment, and comments about that experience.  (He also fishes and keeps a summer fishing journal!)  An artist may keep an art journal, and it can include all kinds of possibilities, such as sketches, drawings, designs, field trips, info on favorite or experimental materials, etc.  My mother-in-law was an experienced weaver and she maintained weaving journals which contained a drawing of a weaving pattern, a process description of how to do it, samples attached of the the threads or yarn she used, and a woven 3"-5" sample of the result.  Though she has died, it is an invaluable family lifetime record of her creative work.  Other crafts come to mind for such a journal, such as quilting, ceramics, etc.  Or suppose someone has recently bought a house which needs considerable repair work.  A journal of the progress on the house, with photographs, paint samples (including names and numbers of the sample in case it is needed in future) would be a wonderful journal.

The use of such journals is not limited to the individual and interests of one person.  In a larger sense, it is a contribution to history.  Rare crafts and techniques can be handed down to the future.  Families and communities treasure the unique contributions of their ancestors.  Below, I've included ideas for journals which might trigger some inspiration to start a journal, though this is definitely not all the possibilities open to be explored.

Just Some Examples to Think About:

Geneology and Family Stories                                    
Sewing, Fashion, Projects
History and Family Events                                          
Holidays
Sketches, Art and Designs                                         
Writing, Poetry, Creative Writing
Dreams                                                                      
Political Cartoons
Gardening                                                                  
Journal as a Gift to Give Away to Someone
Cooking and Recipes                                                 
Bird-Watching Trips
House Renovation and Projects                                  
Children's Games
Travel Journal                                                             
Trains, Planes, etc.
Music                                                                         
Collections (Dolls?  Antiques?  Netsukes?)
Sports (Baseball?  Fishing?  Sky-diving?)                    
How-To-Do-It Projects

Book Lists and Book Notes
Self-Improvement

History and Research
Nature Study

Words of Encouragement:

• "If you are at all interested in immortality, then keep a [journal]."  [David McCullough]
• "Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our posessions." [John Randolph of Roanoke]
• "The function of grandparents is to help children to understand that there was life before them."  [Margaret Mead]
• So much of our lives is lost: our experiences, our wisdoms, our memories, what we have learned during our lives, our choices, our ways of thinking and solving life's problems, our triumphs and despairs . . . unless we write them down.  Journals are the real legacy passed from one generation to the next, and beyond.  [A Cornerhouse Rule, aka CR]
• Write about your life and what is important to you.  Then, re-visit your old thoughts when you want new ideas.  Often, you are your own best resource  Writing it down means it won't be forgotten, even by you.  [CR]  

Developing the Journaling Habit

The basis of Journaling is forming a habit which documents people, their activities and lives, in the midst of passing time and unfolding events.  Time passes.  The days of our lives slide away before we can catch them.  Even our memories fail after a time.  The pleasure in Journaling is saving the days of our lives into a time machine called a Journal which can be savored when we re-read them, can be shared and left for our future generations. "This is what is important . . . Nothing else matters . . .We live and die and the earth or the sea swallows us whole and then we are gone.  But if we're lucky, we can leave something beautiful behind."  [The Sense of Paper, Taylor Holden, p. 40]

Every new year is the time many of us decide to change our lives in some positive way.  Perhaps we want to lose weight or stop smoking, so on January 1, we bravely make a resolution to change all that.  Right now.  Immediately.  And we try our best to follow it ... for a while.  However, for one reason or another, many resolutions soon fall by the wayside.  We don't have time.  It is too hard.  Our friends or family don't mean to, but they "sabotage" our efforts.  Whatever. 

The underlying issue is both simple and complex.  It means giving up old habits in favor of new habits.  The old habits have been a source of pleasure and are solidly ingrained, and the new habits are often full of the pain of some sort of withdrawal and are new and wobbly and full of a deadening sense of duty.  So in order to strengthen the formation of the new habit, we have to jetison the burdensome sense of duty and, though it may be hard to find, seek out the pleasure to be found in the new habit.  Maybe it's losing 2 pounds or being able to breathe again.  But one thing is clear, if we can find the pleasure, then we'll do it again.  Which leads to the question: What is the difference between pleasure and addiction?  Daniel Akst said, "The behavior we call addiction is really a love of pleasure that carries the force of habit." [Akst, We Have Met the Enemy.]


Some Words of Encouragement - the Journaling Habit [i.e., The Cornerhouse Rules , aka CR]:

• "Do several kinds of things, then take note of which ones gave a feeling of pleasure.  Follow the pleasures, as they are the basis of the Journaling habit."  [CR]
• "Be able to tell the difference between a habit and a rut." [CR]
• "Bring something new, something beautiful and something filled with light into the world.  Do something differenc, fresh, new, in order to explore new depths of pleasure, an enrichment in life.""  [Rose Bleckner, Ibid.]
• "Being still and doing nothing are two very different things."  [Jackie Chan, "Karate Kid"]
• "If we don't do it, nothing will happen." [CR]
• "Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us show up and get to work." ["Inside the Artist Studio," a Chuck Close quote by Joe Figg]
• "If you hang in there, you will get somewhere." [Ibid.]
• "Those who love, live on, in their handiwork."  [Jennifer Chiaverini]