Developing the Journaling Process

Write in your journal regularly, depending on what your focus is.  After all, what is a habit, unless it is “habitual?”  If your journal is tied to the seasons, such as gardening or bird watching, it may have more entries during certain parts of the year, the busy season, so to speak.  However, in the “off” season, there is a lot of time to give to learning more about irises or ibises, Virginia creeper or red-headed coots.  Read catalogues, make notes and lists, clip pictures of Dutch bulbs or a great pair of binoculars or a new camera to record your discoveries.  It doesn’t hurt to put those in your journal because it is an ideal way to keep the information at your fingertips when you need it.

So here are some thoughts to help you in your journaling:

• Build a regular habit (daily if that is appropriate)
• Sometimes take a walk before writing
• Write in a different place twice a week (new surroundings can be inspiring)
• Mornings are for dreams
• Afternoons are for ideas
• Evenings are for memories
• Write fast – don’t let that pen get “stuck”
• Be alert to positive opportunities and perspectives; practice optimism
• Write about what you are thinking and feeling
• Supplement your insights with articles and books
• Give ideas time to grow and “bubble”
• Keep asking yourself “What is this?”  “What does this mean?”
• Don’t linger on one thing so long that it becomes stale
• Recognize that going somewhere can be as interesting as arriving; that is, the process in itself can be as fascinating as a goal, and sometimes even more so
• Be prepared to change your mind sometimes
• Fall in love with the doing, not the having
• Let your own intuition give you your own feedback
• Enjoy your successes; forget the losses.

Some Words of Encouragement:

#    “Perhaps the worth of any lifetime is measured more in kindness than in competency.”  [“Kitchen Table Wisdom,” Rachel Remen, p. 42]

#    “Wholeness comes from inside ourselves,” [Ibid., p. 106]

#    Heritage and lineage can be viewed as a chain of connectivity.  [CR]

#    Read a book you loved as a child.  [CR}

#    Read a book written in the year of your birth.  [CR]

#    “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”  [Melvin Lukenbach]

#    “When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.”  [“The 
             Art  Linkletter Show,” a child Guest]

Journals Can Capture Time

It's good to revive old memories.  Often big insights derive from small experiences.

I can remember when I was somewhere between age 2 to 3 years old, I sat on the step with my back to my great-grandmother's dining room.  My eyes were glued to the clock on the living room wall opposite.  I had noticed the pendulum moving back and forth, but what interested me most was watching the clock hands, for if I was careful, I found that I could actually catch the very moment when the big hands "jumped" to another minute.  It was magical, when I first became conscious of the passage of time itself.  And ever after, I have been a pushover when I hear the lovely chimes of a Seth Thomas clock marking my own memory.

I have since discovered lots of other time machines:  Stonehenge, Chesil Beach, the passage of the seasons, migration patterns, tide charts, geneological charts, totem poles, metronomes, an hour glass, church bells, factory whistles, school bells, a ship's log, a rooster crowing, water clocks, sun dials, the London Eye ... these come to mind, each in their unique way.

But, of course, here at Cornerhouse, we speak of jouirnals.  They are also time machines, capturing snapshots of life as it passes, often boring to us perhaps, in its meandering from day to day.  However, it is in the details of those days which communicate what life is really like.  I was interested in an entry I saw in a recent journal submitted by a class member.  She had planned a dinner menu, listed all the recipes, made a shopping list of the ingredients, and then shopped for them.  She kept the cashier's receipts for her grocery purchases and entered all this information into her journal for that day.  It was a normal record of cooking a typical meal in her part of the country, with the costs involved, one day's story. Fast-forward two hundred years into the future, assuming that her journal survived, this would be an invaluable snapshot of life in the past, when the concept of cooking, shopping, and even money, could very well be antiquated curiosities.  Research into the past, and stories and memories from our own lives, if recorded into our journals, then get left to enrich the lives who come after us.  So often, we know, often to the penny, how much money we have to spend in our pockets or our bank accounts, but the days of our lives pass, and we can hardly remember how we spent the most valuable commodity of life, time itself.

Along with our other possessions, our journals can contain the stories and memories of our lives, in a form which can be shared with our families.  We can tell about our memories, our experiences, the things we have learned, the wisdoms we have gained, the solutions we have found, the triumphs and setbacks, things in which we can take pride, and solace for our sorrows.

Some Words of Encouragement:

• "Helen Zechmeister could lift weights, and most would be proud to match her strength and endurance.  She worked out in a daily regimen of running, swimming, and lifting.  She competed in the men's contest for 35 years and older, and won.  The national age-group power-lifting records she has held include 245 lbs. for the dead lift, 94.5 lbs. for the squat, in competition with both women and men in the age 30s range.  The only reason that Zechmeister's scores were not considered world records was because the International Power Lifting Federation had no age classification for her age group.  She was 81."   [This source is lost to CR, but an attribution would be appreciated.  It inspires us to try our best.]
• "He talks about not being to follow your children or even understand them because they belong to the future that you can never visit, not even in your dreams.  Then he compares parents to the bow and children to the arrows.  He says to the parents, 'Let your bending in the archer's hand be for joy. For as He loves the arrow that flies, so too He loves the bow that is stable.' ["My Grandfather's Blessings," Rachel Remen, p. 52]  [Let our journals, like arrows, also fly into the future.  CR]
• "Time and tide wait for no man."  [Proverb]
• "Once upon a time there was ... "  [Always a good place to start a story or a memory.  CR]