Remember your smiles, not just tears

One of my best friends mentioned that she writes in her diary whenever something bad happens. So when she reads her diary, it makes her cry. I also used to record mostly negative things in my earlier journals. It is only natural of course to turn to one's most trusted confidant when things go wrong. When you feel like no one in the world understands you, and all the whirling thoughts in your mind will drive you crazy if you don't get them out somehow, your personal journal/diary is a natural choice. It is a good choice. It gets the words out. It could even be therapeutic. And it's good. But what we must remember that our life - hopefully - does not consist only of those bad moments. There are good days, ordinary days that we don't bother to record because we are of course busy living our life to remember about the poor, miserable journal. While I wouldn't dream of telling people how often they should write in their diary, I do think that we should try to write at least as many entries on good days, as we do on bad days. When I read my earlier journals, it's depressing. But I remember that my life wasn't that bad, and I regret now that I didn't record happier memories that I could revisit. So now, I make conscious effor to record happy stuff, or even everyday stuff. So when I look at my current journals, I might have a more balanced view of my life. I will admit, I am not there yet. My journals tend to obsess about the things I am obsessing about at any given point in time, BUT I am at least aware of it, and I am making an effort. If you are going to re-read your journals then you should take a moment to think about what you want to see in them. Do you want to read about life as it truly is? Do you want to revisit just the horrible things that happen to you? Do you want to read just happy stuff? Personally, I go for the first. Memory is unreliable at the best of time, so having those memories stored on the pages of my journals is as close to a true narrative of my life as I can get. Of course when you are having a bad day, you are not going to think about writing happy things. So do this little thing - go stick a post-it to your journal with a note "write happy things". So when you are happy, perhaps that will encourage you to jot down few words.

Journaling with Honesty

Everyone knows that journals/diaries are private. Everyone knows – even if they put the conscious aside – that no one should read someone else’s private journal without permission. We have this social courtesy embedded in us because we believe that private journals include a person’s most innermost thoughts and secrets. But the question is, how much of a person’s true self is placed in their journals? This question doesn’t require an answer so much as reflection. I have been thinking about this quite a lot recently. I know for a fact that my earlier journals were more of a recording of day-to-day events, and outbursts of feelings, usually negative. But just writing about how you love someone, or hate someone, or are upset with someone, doesn’t mean you are sharing your self in those pages. Unconsciously, I censored what I wrote. Not in everything, but in great many things. I realise that now when I look back. Something that seemed either too horrible to write, or something that made me feel guilty for thinking it, I didn’t write it. Writing down those things would be an admission that one thought those things. But if not written, then it would be forgotten. Lately, since I started making more conscious effort to search for self through journaling, I have begun to change it. If my journals are to be a place for my private thoughts, then they must have all of me – good and the bad. If I am to go deeper in my own mind, attempting to unravel the puzzle of my own personality, then I must understand all aspects of my personality. It has been a gradual progress, but I am getting there. As soon as I question whether I should write something down, I do. If it makes me hesitate whether it should be in my journals, then it should. I have come to believe that no matter what your reasons are for keeping a journal, unless you do it with complete honesty, it defeats the purpose. If you keep it for yourself, for memories, for therapy – what good are those things if they don’t show you the truth? If you keep it as a legacy to your descendants – it would be travesty to give them an incomplete picture, because by doing so you are creating a fake history. By doing so you are lying not only to yourself, but to the future. What is your opinion? How honest are you in your journals?

Naming my Moleskine

When I first started keeping a diary, I used to start with traditional "Dear Diary". Then as my diaries became journals, I stopped doing it. It just felt silly to start with a "Dear Diary" so I just start with a date.

I don't usually name objects (except Teddy bears obviously), but when I got my netbook, I knew *he* had to have a name. He is Finn, and that's how I refer to him, and I totally adore him.

Anne Frank calls her diary, Kitty. She has turned her diary into an actual person, and she writes as if confiding into one friend she can trust with her innermost thoughts. It made me wonder if I should give my journals name(s). I don't share all my thoughts with anyone. Never have, and I doubt I ever will. In journals, I try to be as honest as possible, but sometime there is automatic censorship. So I wondered, would it make a difference, if I felt I was writing to a friend?

My journals are extremely important to me, so I certainly don't see them as mere objects. But to name them would be to personalise them. Anne consistently called her diaries "Kitty" because she was actually writing letters to a friend. But I see each of my journal as individual entities, though connected. It would feel totally wrong to call them all by same names, and yet you can't get close to many different friends.

So as I was writing in my current moleskine that I use for private journaling yesterday, I wondered if *she* should have a name. I haven't decided yet. Perhaps it is easier to write to a journal than a person, even if fictional. I don't know.

How about you? Do you ever name your journals? Does it make the experience of sharing your soul any easier?

Inspired to Journal More

I am always on the look out for ways to improve my journaling techniques. The improvement is more about developing good habits, remembering to do new things rather than sticking to old ways. My journals often tend to be filled with my thoughts and feelings, and the real world that I live in, gets quite neglected. I would like a balance. Recording and exploring feelings and thoughts is fine, but I also want to be able to look back and read about what's happening in the world about me. So every time I read an article about journaling or read someone else's experience, I make a note of what I like and try to implement it.

Current inspiration comes from an amazing source. I started reading, "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank. Most of you, no doubt, have heard of Anne Frank's Diary, a young jewish girl from Amsterdam who went into hiding with her family for 2 years during World War II, before they were finally caught by the Nazis. Anne started her diary when she was 13, and wrote in it for 2 years of her captivity. It is touching, and it is wonderful, all the more so because it is just a diary of a teenage girl. She is honest in her recordings, and though war plays a great part in her entries, at its core, it's about Anne - the person. It also strikes a chord with me because I seem to share quite a few personality traits with Anne. So much so that few of her passages could have come straight out of my own diaries.

I love reading other people's diaries - historical of course, because for one, I don't know anyone in real life who keeps them, and also because it's such a personal thing that most people would not want to share it. I know I certainly would not.

So what Anne's diary has inspired me to do? She has inspired me to be honest with myself in my journals. Granted, in her later entries she does mention that she can't believe how indelicate she was in writing some things, but I think it's a good thing. Despite a journal being a personal thing, sometimes, mind automatically censors. I have improved considerably over the years, but I could do with more.

It has also inspired me to find other published diaries, and read more, not only to see what I can learn but also to learn about those people's journeys through their own journals.

How about you? Do you like reading other people's diaries? Do you like to improve your journals or are you happy with what you have?

Moleskine Art Journal - Goal for 2010

Towards the end of 2009, I began my first experiment with Art Journaling and I fell in love with it. In the olden days, writing used to be my hobby. But now that I am hell-bent on making writing my profession, I decided I needed a new hobby that I could allow myself to be bad at, while being creative and having fun - so art was a natural selection. And since I am addicted to journals, art journal was again just the next step. I did a few pages this year and restarted drawing/painting. So for 2010, I have decided to take it one step further, and consciously devote more time to it. My goal then is to finish a complete art journal. I will be using a Large Watercolour Moleskine. I have already done 3 pages in it this year, but there are still 68 pages for next year, so that's more than one a week, and with my schedule, that's plenty. I chose Watercolour Moleskine, because its thick pages give me more freedom of medium. I can use watercolours, paste paper/cards, sketch pens and felt tip pens. It's pretty flexible. Getting really excited about it now, and looking forward to it.

Single Moleskine Grievance

I love my moleskines. I truly do. But I have one grievance. None of my fabulous fountain pens work well on any of the moleskines. I have 2 regular Parker Fountain Pens 1 Parker Pen (expensive one, but can’t remember the exact model) 1 Waterman Fountain Pen On watercolour moleskine, the ink is absorbed in the texture of the pages. On that one, it’s understandable and I am not very bothered. On sketchbook, the pages are too smooth for the ink to stay properly. On regular – both plain and ruled moleskine, pages are too thin, so while the fountain pens work, you can see the impression on the back of the page, which sucks because I write on both sides of a page. Oh yeah, I also have a quill with an ink bottle, but haven’t tried that on moleskines. I really enjoy writing with fountain pens, especially in my journals or anything that I am likely to keep. It just looks better, and my hand-writing is nicer with fountain pens too, so I really miss not being able to use them a lot, especially since now I have officially converted to 100% moleskines for every type of journal I need. How about you? Have you been able to use fountain pens with your moleskines?

Photo Book

Yesterday I ordered my first photo book as a Christmas present. After a few mishaps with several online places, I ended up ordering it with Jessop’s (still online order), so I can pick it up from the local branch. I have made scrapbooks with photos before, but creating a photo book was a new experience. While, it doesn’t feel satisfying from a creative point of view, it still looks fabulous, and something fun to flip through, and improvement from old-fashioned photo albums. I am already thinking of what other photo books I should order :-)