Wednesday 3 November 2010

Meet a Journal Keeper - Kevin

Hi Dolly,
Journal Keeper


Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of your delightful website!  Your website is one of the few websites I try to visit every day.  

I love to journal and have been doing so for most of my life.  I started in middle school (11-12 years old?) and now I am 49 years old.  I have saved all of my journals and I love to occasionally glance back through them.  It is so interesting to see where I was and what I was thinking 10 years ago or even 6 months ago.  I have never been good at keeping photo albums so my journals also function as a kind of photo album since I often paste pictures I have taken in them, even more so these days with the proliferation of digital cameras and cheap, high quality color printers.
Mostly I write my daily activities, cerebral ponderings, doodles, quotes, drawings and ideas.  

I also love to cut things out of magazines and paste them into my journal as well.  I also tend to paste in movie tickets, receipts from restaurants I really liked and stickers I find or are donated by my kids.  I carry my journal with me everywhere.  It is in my briefcase on the way to work and it sits on my desk while I am working so I can jot down ideas if a good one strikes.  I carry it with me when I go to the doctors office or when I am dining out alone.  It is my friend and constant companion.

I have discovered I write best when my kids are with me.  They are most assuredly my muse and always fill my head with wild imaginings.  This is the way it is with kids.  They think so freely and without reserve.  They revel and joy in life’s simple pleasures and in that wonderful sparkling mirror they bounce that blissful spirit to all of those around them.  I don’t know what I would be without them.  They have started journaling themselves and it fills my heart with joy to sit down and write, doodle or draw with them.   

We are all pen and pencil fanatics and love to go to local art stores on the weekends to pick a new, cool pen or pencil to write with for the rest of the weekend.  I keep a few tins and jars on my writing desk that are filled with colorful and fun pens and pencils that we all pilfer from regularly.
Warm regards,

Kevin  (AKA Laser T. Swift)





Workspace

7 comments:

  1. Kevin,

    Thank you for this great post, and for inspiring idea for this guest series :-)

    Feel free to participate in this guest post in the future if you wish. I intend to keep a slot open every Wednesday.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Kevin... Great post! It inspires me to do carry around my journal and write in it a little more regularly. Take care!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Scott - Thanks for the kind words. Happy journaling!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Kevin....Love your post! I'm 41 and I thought I was the only adult who filled their journals with stickers, movie tickets, and magazine clippings. Nice to know I'm not alone!! I like the fact that you take your journal with you wherever you go....I usually leave mine at home because I'm afraid to lose it....but after reading your post, I think it will be tagging along with me from now on. Thanks again for the inspiration!

    Lisa

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Lisa,

    There are two of us who paste things in our journal! YAY!!

    Yep, I highly suggest you take your journal with you. I too once worried about losing my journal but then I realized that the benefit totally outweighed the small possibility of loss. Besides, if you lose it you have a great excuse to buy another intoxicating journal!!

    Have fun, journal always

    Kevin

    ReplyDelete
  6. Don't know if you'll see this, but I stole your idea to add my movie ticket stubs to my journal. I've saved all the ones of the movies my wife and I saw together while dating and into marriage and now with my kids. What a great ('nother) way to chronicle our lives. I always think about my kids reading through my journals when I'm gone and it would be fun for them to see the movies i took in. I also put their school pictures in my journals. I open my journal more than any other book so what better place to see my kids?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Shane,

    That is a such a fabulous idea. I'm sure your kids will enjoy it one day and it will make such a good keepsake for you and your wife. If you would like to share a picture or two, I would be happy to post them here.

    ReplyDelete