Turn of the Century Journal

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20101117/news/311179997/jennifer-jacksons-port-townsend-neighbor-column-teens-turn-of


Thanks to Dave Terry for sending me this fascinating link, about a teenager's journal from 1909. Check it out!

Meet a Journal Keeper - Rowland

Yup: I'm a journal keeper. I started in Dec. 2003, and am now on No.35. - virtually all Moleskines: I tried two other books but came back to the big M.

I stared keeping a journal as a means of expressing my anger and frustration at aparticularly bad stage of my life... but got bored with that very quickly . . . . you can only be pissed off for so long, surely? Anyway I'd always loved pens, pencils and writing and I'd always wanted to draw. So the notebooks gradually evolved into ... well basically a record of my life, including cuttings, quotes, thoughts, photos and now sketches . So a few examples:

Currently doing lot of B&W

Sometimes it's what I eat

Quotes? 'Never work' Guy Debord

Work from my journals has been featured in Zuiderlucht, a Dutch arts news paper based in Maastricht, for the last two years, under the title RAM.

Earlier this year I did the first RAM exhibition in Italy where I live, and this autumn www.matchboox.com published a miniature handmade book of work from my journals.

I, honestly, feel lost without a journal to hand. You can see more excerpts from them at http://www.reallyaccessiblememory.com/

I don't call myself an artist, though I draw; I don't call myself a writer, though I write..... my Italian blog is called simply lo scarabocchiatore...the scribbler!!!

Hope this is enough to give you a taste of my journal addiction!


Cheers,


Rowland

Travel Journal Preparation

Every time before I go on a trip, I go through a ritual. I pick out my travel journal.  I must admit, being a journal addict, I rarely had to actually go out and buy a new journal, because I buy them when I find them, which means I usually have a selection at home. Not so much with travel journals usually, but this time I was lucky. I had bought one while wandering through a shop, and found a lovely journal on sale, and I had another one that my sister gave me for Christmas a year or so ago.

 

I decided to go with the one my sister gave me, because I like it better, and I was saving it for a reasonably long trip so I could fill it. It has quite wide rules, so with pre-trip journaling, on-trip journaling, and post-trip journaling, I should be able to fill it. At least I should, if I don't get lazy (sometimes that happens.) So now the journal is selected.

 

First step is to write down dates of the trip on the front page, then create couple of pages for an Index. Then I start with bit of pre-trip journaling. Include itinerary, expectations, why I picked this destination etc. Whatever I fancy really. That way, I also experiment with different pens and find out what works better on each journal, so that I know what pens to take on my trip.

 

Besides breaking in a new journal, the most exciting part is doing research on travel journals. I must admit, I don't really need to do this - but I enjoy it. Often I would just browse through pictures of people's travel journals on Google images or flickr, or I would read articles about keeping travel journals. It motivates me. It inspires me. It gets me excited about my travel journal.

 

Travel journaling is very important for my own memories, but it is also a learning process. I aim to make each of my journal better than the last one, to capture the full extent of my experience. It doesn't always happen, because sometimes at the end of a long day, I can't be bothered to write. Sometimes I end up writing too much about my feelings and not enough of facts, or sometimes too many facts and not enough about my personal impressions.

 

Also, being a good travel journal keeper helps tremendously with regular journals. It is the same process. It is just that quite often we forget to look at our everyday world with fresh eyes. We forget to look for exciting things, just because we walk past them. So whenever I keep a travel journal, I inevitably get much better involved in my day-to-day journal too.

 

What about you? Do you keep travel journals? Do you have any special methods of selecting a journal? Do you write every day on your trip, or occasional tid-bids?

Meet a Journal Keeper - Dave

Thanks for the opportunity to share with your readers my journaling style.  

First off let me say how surprised to read your last journaler's post.  It's a guy!  I meet so few guys that journal, or admit to it anyway, that I was in total shock.  

I started serious journaling when my son was in sixth grade.  He English teacher told the class that they all has to keep a journal and write in it each and every day.  He was quite bummed about this "chore" and so I promised him I'd keep one too.  We went down to the local dollar store and bought the two smallest ones we could find.  They were sort of girlie so we covered them in manly contact paper.  

He kept to his promise and I to mine.  At the end of the year we sat down and shared portions of our journals with each other, especially the days when we did things together.  It was interesting to hear his perspective on these days.  He said he was a little sad to see the journal year end.  Then we decided to try another year.  He and I have kept one every year since.  Although we have moved up to the bigger journals without the tiny locks.

When he graduated I pulled some stores and quotes from my journal and created a scrapbook with pictures.  It was the hit of the grad party.  Everyone wanted to read the stores.

I now have about 20 journals.  I do wish I had started earlier. So now I encourage everyone to start now.  You'll be glad you did.

I have a few requirements for my journals: 

• They must have at least 365 pages (I write a page a day)
• They must be sewn bound (my journals get a beating)
• I only use waterproof ink (usually a fountain pen)
• It must be at least 5 x 7 (most are 6 x 8)

I usually write at the end of the day and try to focus on the positive.  I sometimes whine but try to keep that to a minimum.  Who wants to read a whiner?  I certainly don't, even if it is me.

In the last three years I've been adding sketches to my journals.  I usually sketch something simple, my lunch, a chair, whatever happens to be at hand and then at the end of the day do my journaling around it. I often add watercolor washes.  My journals become quite interesting when I travel.

Although I also keep an electronic journal (usually about 750 words a day), I find the paper journal most relaxing and enjoyable to look over later.  I have attempted to keep an index of my paper journal in an electronic spreadsheet.  My idea was to be able to locate the entries by keyword.  But I haven't kept it consistently.

I also keep a work journal that relates to software design.  These are more diagrams and pictures.  But I never mix secular work journals and personal journals.  That's just my style and it seems to work for me.

Anyway my personal journal, and now my illustrated journal, has become such a part of my everyday life I can't imagine doing without it.  Sometimes is clears my head, at other times it's just relaxing, at still later times it brings great satisfaction to look back and see the progress I've made.

Also, in the last three years I've been adding sketches to my journals.  Here are a few examples from the last three years:

2010: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveterry/sets/72157623170701024/

2009: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveterry/sets/72157614575548476/

2008: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveterry/sets/72157603704230853/

Thanks again for the opportunity to share.

...dave

travel.daveterry.net

daveterry.blogspot.com

Remembrance Sunday

Remembrance Sunday

Tribute to Remembrance Sunday with a Poppy and a Poem.

Dr. Who Moleskine

My new Plain Moleskine. It's the first one that I decided to decorate, and Dr. Who stickers seemed like the best way to start!

I absolutely love this moleskine, and this will be my 20th Journal, which I will be starting today, having finished my 19th Journal (236 pages), in one day less than 4 months. 

I am hooked on decorating covers now, so looking forward to buying more journals to spruce up.

Anyone know where I can buy Stargate stickers? ;)

Moleskine Pen Test

I bought some new pens to try with my moleskine. I have used several before, but not been satisfied with any. 

Here, I must point out - it depends on the moleskine too. For my Moleskine Sketchbook, I have a perfect pen. Pentel Energel 0.7. It works fabulously on thick sketchbook pages.

But my quest this time was for plain or ruled moleskine, which has thinner pages. After reading several reviews from other moleskine users, I bought five pens.

Uniball Signo 207, 0.7

Pilot G-Tec - C4

Pilot G2-0.38

Pilot G2-0.5

Pilot G2-0.7

Yes, four of them were Pilot, because it's a good, trusty brand, and I knew it was just a matter of finding the right fit. I tested all of them, and these are my results:

Pilot G-Tec-C4 and Pilot G2-0.38, while excellent are not for me. Their very fine point are more suited to sketching than writing. For writing, I find them bit rough on the page, and the writing is quite light. But I tried a few doodles, and it definitely works. Unfortunately, I am not much of a sketcher, so I will just find some other uses for them, or there is always doodling.

Pilot G2 - 0.5 - very good. This is the pen most frequently recommended by other moleskine users. I liked it. It's comfy, and it flows, but I did find it bit hesitant on the page.

Pilot G2 - 0.7 and Uniball Signo 207, 0.7 - my favourites, and perfect for me. I don't know if I like one of them better. I guess I will find out after more use. But the ink flows very smoothly. There is absolutely no roughness to it. Writing comes out properly black, dark, just as I like it, and 0.7 is definitely more suited to A LOT of writing. Between the two, I would buy either one of these or both for use with my moleskine, and probably other writing material too.