Tag Archives: journal

Journal Friday: The Gratitude Journal

1 Reply

If you trawl self help and wellbeing blogs like I do, you’ll probably have come across the idea of the Gratitude Journal before.  Lots of people swear by them.  You might think they are a bit of a cheesy idea, writing down what you are grateful for in your life every day.  I mean, isn’t it self-evident?

Maybe not.

Think about all the time you spend moaning and complaining about what is wrong with your life.  Our consumer culture programmes us to always want something else, something more than what we already have.  There might be a reason why all those slum dwellers you see in doumentaries look so happy.  Its not because they are glad to be living in squallor and poverty, that’s for sure.  Maybe it’s because they have so little that they value what they do have.

Let me tell you a story about one of the most inspiring people I have ever known:

My Great Auntie Kitty.

She was in her late 80s and early 90s when I knew her.  I was a small child – I think I was probably about 8 or 10 when she died.  I didn’t know her well because she lived in a town four hours drive from our home, so we were only able to visit her rarely, but she made a big impression.

Auntie Kitty was born disabled as a result of problems with her hips and legs, though I don’t remember specifically what.  Suffice it to say that she had never been able to walk properly and had worn calipers all her life.  By the time I knew her, she was severely crippled with arthritis, in appalling pain, and mostly blind from macular degeneration.  She was also quite deaf.  But she had a brain as sharp as a knife, and wit to match, loved to debate politics, ethics and religion, and kept up to the minute with all the news through her radio.  She also loved talking books, which she listened to continually as well.  She was funny, entertaining, and never let you get away with anything, especially self pity or fuzzy thinking.

Like many younger daughters, she had devoted her life to caring for others in her family, nursing her own parents and siblings through old age and into death.  She was the last of her generation to survive.  She had never married.  She had battled her way through a hard life through sheer force of will.

I remember her telling me this:

Every night, when she lay in the dark after the carer had come to put her to bed, she would think of three things in her life to be grateful for.  Sometimes she was in horrific pain, and thinking of anything to be thankful for was very difficult.  But she told me that no matter what, she could always find something.

Every night for the last thirty years, I have done the same.  Three things.  Just three.  Usually there are plenty more.  I could fill pages!  Some nights, if I’ve had a row with my husband or I’m in a lot of pain, as I sometimes am, I can struggle a bit. It can be pretty rudimentary on those occasions:

1.  I have a roof over my head.

2.  I have a bed to support me.

3.  There is ibuprofen in the cupboard.

Most of the time, there is plenty to be grateful for:

1.  I have a wonderful husband who loves me.

2.  I live in a beautiful place that most people would give a limb to inhabit.

3.  I have lots of friends who care for me very much.

4.  I get to write!!  (And so on)

I do this every night, come what may, partly in remembrance of Auntie Kitty, in celebration of her huge personality and bravery, and partly for myself.  Because it helps.

Being grateful shifts us into awareness, not only of what is real in our lives, but what is important.  Having that latest pair of shoes or the new Clarisonic really is not important compared with the people who we love and who love us.  Unlike the slum dwellers of the Developing World, most of us know we have a safe place to sleep tonight, and food in our bellies.  We have other, First World problems, I suppose, but there is still such a lot to be thankful for.  It is so easy to forget how fortunate we are.  Let’s not.

(I was going to take a picture of my Gratitude Journal to show you, but somehow it felt wrong.  An invasion.  Privacy, remember?  I find my reaction about that interesting itself, and I propose to explore it more in my own journal later, because I wasn’t expecting to feel that way.  Its interesting when you find boundaries you didn’t know were there, don’t you think?)

Journal Exercise:

Okay, you get to go out and indulge in the stationery shop again this week!  Go and choose yourself a nice little notebook, one with small pages.  I use this one.

Every night before you go to bed, get your notebook out and write at least three things that you are grateful for today.  Use a separate page every day, and date each.  Sometimes you will fill the page, and wish you had another.  Maybe you will go on a fill another, that’s up to you.  Some days you will be grumpy and resentful, and won’t feel like doing anything other than having a pity party for yourself.  Regardless, remember: write three things.  Just three.  It will help.

At the end of the first month, go back through your notebook and reflect on the things you have written down.  What are your lists showing about what important to you?  Write about this in your journal, if you like.  How has a daily gratitude practise changed the way you feel about your life?

Happy Journalling,

EF

Journal Friday: More about Privacy

2 Replies
sussex church

Herstmonceaux Church, East Sussex

I’ve been thinking a lot about boundaries lately, and about the freedom they afford us to be ourselves.  We talk a lot about the boundaries we set for ourselves in the external world – saying no to doing too much, closing the door for some quiet time, backing off from an over-needy friend who is monopolising us.  What we rarely seem to do is think about the internal boundaries we set up, or fail to set up.

I think one of the things women, especially, do is to set up one set of boundaries for themselves, and one for everyone else, and not in a good way.

Let me give you an example:  my mother is a nice lady.  People like her.  She is charming and good company.  But she speaks to herself in ways she would never dream of using to others.  ‘You stupid bloody woman,’ I hear her saying to herself when she gets frustrated that she can’t remember things anymore now she’s in her 80s, ‘You idiot, can’t you do anything right?’  My mother does not have a boundary about treating herself in acceptable, compassionate and loving ways. I suppose I must have learnt the same trick from her, because sometimes, I catch myself doing it too.

It is hard enough to put your foot down when you need to set external boundaries.  It is even harder to do it when those oh-so-flexible standards are inside your own head. We need to destroy those self-sabotaging habits as much as we can.  This is what my husband calls:

‘Locating and Killing Your Inner Nigel.’

(You’ve heard about my ‘Nigel’ voice before!)  Sometimes Nigel is just your inner critic, telling you the story you just wrote, the sculpture you just made, is crap.  Sometimes he is a complete Hitler, out to annihilate you with core beliefs you didn’t even know you had!

Keeping a journal is a great way to kick the crap out of Nigel.

To do this, you have to feel free within your journal’s pages to say and do whatever you want.  Rubbish spelling?  Fine.  No punctuation?  Great.  Scribbly handwriting, not being neat? Perfect.  And those scrappy drawings?  Absolutely compulsory, if you feel the need.  The rule is this:

No Judgement.

Tell Nigel to go copulate with himself.  You say and do what you want.  Only then wil your journal come into its own, only then can it be your complete friend, your safe place, without self-censorship.

I wrote in a previous post about who you write your journal for, and although I still stand by that piece, it has been bothering me.  Because you see, if you always have an eye on posterity, on what people who come after you will with think of you, then you will never be honest.  And you must be honest, otherwise why bother?  Without honesty, you are wasting your time.  Who cares if you are being petulant, smug, dull or sulky inside your journal’s pages?  No one is perfect all the time.

Your diary must be, first and foremost, always for you alone, whatever else it is.

Journal Exercise:

When you write this week, do not judge yourself. Do not think about what anybody who reads your journal in years to come will think of you.  Pay no attention to Nigel the Neat Nazi, who wants everything in pukka little rows, with perfect handwriting and impeccable grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Scribble.  Make a mess.  Be what ever you are inside.  Set yourself this new internal boundary.

When it comes to my diary, I will be completely myself, whoever that is at this moment.

Happy Journalling,

EF

Journal Friday: Motivations

2 Replies
Grandmas 80th

Family memories: Who are you leaving a legacy for? (That isn’t me, incidentally, its my own Grandma, and my nephew and two nieces, all grown up now.)

I became a Great Auntie for the third time yesterday.  Actually, saying that makes me sound old, and I’m not, really I’m not.  I became an aunt for the first time when I was 14, and since then my siblings have surrounded me with a reasonably sized and very rewarding family.  A big family event like this, or even just a friend having a baby, always raises a question for me, since I don’t have children of my own.

When I am gone, who will remember I was here?

I think that is one of the reasons I have stuck so dilligently to the diary-keeping habit.  The need to leave a mark,  To leave something of myself for posterity.  My diary is a record of my brain as much as anything, its change and development;  the ideas and interests I have had; the things I believe in; the problems i have struggled with and the solutions I have found.  And yes, it records my loves and losses too.

Every time I write, there is a part of me, something in the back of my mind, that is aware that one day, some beloved relative will find these notebooks and start to read them.  I don’t censor myself because of that.  Far from it, because I want them to know, fifty years down the line, who I really was, and what my daily struggles and joys actually were.

Some women keep a diary throughout their pregnancies, talking to their unborn child through the pages.  Others record their terminal illnesses so as to leave a message for their children to remember them by in later years.

Writing a diary can also be a more direct conversation with another person.  Anne Frank wrote her famous diary to her imaginary friend Kitty, perhaps so that she would not feel so alone in her wretched circumstances.  I doubt she ever thought she was leaving a legacy that would inspire people all over the world for decades to come.  For Frank, Kitty was a friend and confidante, a person to whom she could confide things she would never be able to say to anyone else.

For the most part, people write diaries and journals for and to themselves.  They may have little thought of recording ‘interesting times’, unless they are self-seeking politicians such as Alan Clark.  They write because they need to, because it helps them work things out, or simply because they enjoy it.

None of these reasons is wrong.  There are no wrong reasons.  You might think it self-important to want to leave a mark on the world, but it doesn’t make it a reprehensible motivation.   We all have our motivations for doing what may seem an apparently narcissistic activity, at least on the surface.

What are yours?

Journal Exercise:

Take out your journal and spend a few pages musing on why you write it, and whether you write to or for someone.  Journals are not meant to be read by anyone except their writer, at least not without permission, but sometimes we write with someone specific in mind.  Do you write for someone else, to someone else, or just to yourself?  Do you mean to use your writing as a prompt for other forms of creativity, painting for instance?  Or do you want to record a difficult stage in your life so that you can learn from it?  Do you want to write things down so you will remember them in years to come, or do you want to leave a record for posterity and your great-grandchildren?

If you have something to say to a specific person that you cannot say to their face, write them a letter in your diary, letting it all out.  You never have to send it, but it can help to say those things in some private, safe way.  That is what your diary is for.

If you are interested in historical diaries, you might look at The Great Diary Project for inspiration.  Other people’s published diaries can be an endless source of inspiration, and I will be writing about notable ones in future posts.  In the meantime, why not pop out to your local library or bookshop and see what you can pick up.

Happy journalling!

Journal Friday: Check In and Kick Start

1 Reply

So how are you doing?  Have you been writing your Morning Pages?  Did you buy yourself a journal and scribble your thoughts?

I started my Artist’s Way ‘Redux’ on Monday, and so far I have only missed one day on the Morning Pages (MPs).  I’m feeling pretty proud of myself.  I keep my MP notebook by my bed, along with my fountain pen, and write when I wake up.  It seems to be clearing the sleepy fluff out of my head, and helping me to work out what I want to do for the day.  What’s important.  (Need to be careful not to get ink on my nice white sheets, though!)

How about you?

Did you have a go with the journal exercise last week, as Puggle did?  Did you find out more about your life, and where you are?  Maybe even where you want to be?

Why not share with us how you are doing by leaving a message in the replies/comments?

Sometimes, its hard to think of what to write, or how to start.  I have to admit, there are times when I sit down with my journal or MPs and stare into space and think ‘what now?’  My MPs especially are punctuated by the sentence:  ‘I don’t know what to write next, my mind has gone blank.’

If you are suffering from this, and need a little kick start to get you going, here are some ideas that might just prime your pump.

Kick-Start Exercise # 1:  What Happened today?

Yes, I know that sounds boring and traditional, but maybe its not if you go about it the right way.  What was the most important thing that happened to you today, the event or feeling that sticks out in your mind above all others as important?

It might be the moment the doctor told you that your child didn’t have meningitis.  (Or did, in which case I am sorry.)   It might be that your boss complimented you on your work for the first time ever.  It might just be a moment when you were sitting at the traffic lights and looked up, and the clouds making were breathtakingly beautiful shapes, and it felt good to be alive.   Maybe nothing happened, and that in itself is a relief, an achievement or a significant red flag for you.

We go through our lives in a state of dazed distraction most of the time.  We barely notice the things that are important, let alone the things that are not, no matter how beautiful or poignant they may be.  Take a moment to stop and record what was most important today, the lasting memory of the waking hours you have just experienced that you want to take forward with you into the future.

Kick Start Exercise #2:  Have a Rant

If you are still stuck, how about writing about somethiing that makes you angry.  Everybody has something.  If you don’t, maybe you want to consider that in and of itself – are you repressing feelings, and if so, why?  Maybe your rant has to do with the neighbour allowing their dog to bark at all hours of the night, or potholes in the road that the council doesn’t fix.   What would you say to them if you could?  Maybe you want to yell at the government for some policy you don’t like, or you hate that your washing machine seems to eat socks and you can never find a complete pair.  Perhaps there are things you need to shout at your parents, partner or children, but don’t feel able to.  Your diary or journal is a safe place for all this.  Let it out.

Good luck with your journalling and MPs this week, and please share how you are getting on with us here.

Journal Friday: The Rules

2 Replies

2013 diary

There is something about keeping a diary that makes us think there has to be rules. It may be something to do with those little lockable five year diaries girls were bought by well-meaning aunts in the 1970s.

If we aren’t careful, diaries become about OUGHTS – you know, how you OUGHT to do things – and I gave up doing OUGHTS about 10 years ago.  I don’t live in SHOULDland anymore.

The truth is that there are as many ways of keeping a diary as there are diarists.  But over the last 38 years I have found that the following guidelines are useful, for me and for friends I have helped with diary writing.

Guideline # 1:  Absolute Privacy is Non-Negotiable.

A journal/diary is a place you need to be able to be yourself.  Otherwise it is no good to you.  Where else can you say all the things you really need to express, but daren’t because someone might get upset or hurt.  Where else can you confide your deepest desires, wildest fantasies, greatest irritations, and the things you plan to do to Brad Pitt if you every get your hands on him?

I suppose this is what the lockable diary was about, all those years ago – I never had one, but I had a friend who did, and I envied her’s so much.  Funny – she never wrote in it.  I wonder why?  Maybe for her, it was an OUGHT.  Or maybe, she was worried that the lock was an invitation for her brother to break in and read her most intimate thoughts.

However you ensure privacy is up to you.  Maybe you need to get the agreement of those with whom you live.  My husband and I have shared a home for the last 16 years, and he has never once looked at my diary.  He knows it is my private place.  (I respect his privacy in turn.)

You may have to physcally hide your journal from prying eyes, which seems a shame to me, but then I don’t live with annoying siblings anymore.  You may need to keep it in a locked drawer at work, or hide it under a loose floorboard (I hope you don’t), but whatever you do, you need to be satisifed that whatever you say is safe and for you alone.  Otherwise you will not say what is in your heart, and that is not only defeating the object, but denying the healing power of the diary.

If your partner is upset and worried about your keeping a diary, comfort them that it is not a threat to your relationship with them.  Reassure them that it is a place for you to express yourself, to have a freedom that will in turn invigorate your relationship with them.

Guideline # 2:  Date Every Entry

Duh!  Yeah, this seems obvious, but sometimes people forget.  You need some kind of way to navigate this mountain of paper you are going to create.  Chronology is the way human beings connect things within their own lives, so it makes sense to use that.

Guideline # 3:  Write when you have something to say

Don’t allow yourself to fall for the tyranny of writing every day.  Sometimes you will write every day.  This is especially useful to do when experiencing difficult and demanding times, when you are trying to work out how you feel, or where you want your life to go next.  But do not force it.  Write only when you have something you wish to record, understand or work out.  And don’t beat yourself up if you look back and find a gap of months at a time.  Those were the times when you were too busy living to write, and thats okay too.

Guideline # 4:  It doesn’t have to be perfect

This is especially true if you have the nasty habit like I do, of perfectionism.  After all, whats the point in doing something unless you can do it perfect first time?

Reject perfectionism.  Make a mess.  Scribble.  Write scruffily.  Make blots.  Have fun.  Use different colours.  Play.

If you are doing art journals, beware of perfectionism in the images you create.  Its just for you.  You aren’t going to show this to anybody, so it doesn’t have to be Leonardo first time.

Aways tell Nigel (your perfectionist’s voice, remember him?) to bugger off, and just enjoy yourself.  Have fun.  It really doesn’t have to be perfect.

Journal Exercise – Where am I right now?

I hope that following last week’s post, you have been out and bought yourself a lovely notebook to write in.  Maybe you are already scribbling down your thoughts.  But perhaps you feel a bit stuck.  Sometimes it is a bit hard to get started.  Here is what I do:

Write down the sentence:  This is where I am right now.

Now, write whatever comes to mind after that.  You might want to describe the room you are sitting in, the town you may be visiting, the lover, friends or colleagues you are with.  Or you might want to talk about where you are in your life, the joys and frustrations you are experiencing, the hopes and fears lurking in the back of your mind.  Write whatever comes out, and don’t censor it.  No judging, no Nigels, remember?  Just do a brain dump.

Then, when you have finished saying where you are right now, maybe you can go on from there, and write about whatever else pops into your head.  Or maybe you can stop.  And use the same prompt tomorrow.

Whenever you feel you need to write, but don’t know where to start, this prompt is a great one.  It grounds you in your life and your feelings.  It often tells you things you didn’t know about yourself right now.  It illuminates, as well as getting the wheels rolling.

Happy journalling!

Journal Friday: Why Keep a Journal?

2 Replies

Diary Pile 2

Every Friday we will be talking about Journalling here at Evenlode’s Friend.  Today, we are starting right at the beginning – why would you bother?

My story

I’ve been keeping a diary or journal (I use the two words interchangably) for 38 years.  (Please don’t do the Maths!)  On my seventh birthday, my father took me out to our local county town, beautiful Winchester, as a special treat.  I had been given a WH Smith token for £2, which was a lot of money in those days, so we went shopping.  I fell in love with a hardback blank page A5 journal.  The cover was cream, with little chocolate brown fleur de lis on it. It was £2, all I had, but I had to have it.   My father asked me what I was planning to do with it, and I said I didn’t know.  I shall never forget what he said:

You should keep a diary.  Every young lady should keep a diary.

And that was it.  Thirty-eight years later, I am still doing it.  But why have I kept going that long?  After all,  there must be more than my father’s kindly injunction.

Why?

My diary has been my friend and confidante through good times and bad,  In it, I have confided my grief at my father’s death, and my joy at the births of my nieces and nephews.  I have recorded my struggles with anorexia, depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  I have worked through emotional issues.  I have raved about my lovers, and often I have raved at them.  I have documented my marriage and my creative life.  I have made lists and plans,  and scribbled cartoons, stuck in newspaper clippings, and written page after page of thoughts and feelings that I could share with nobody else.  My diary has been safe place where I could work things out.  It has been my therapist, my friend and my memory.

But there is more!  My diary is the springboard into my creative life.  I always write my diary before I begin a creative writing session.  I find it clears the everyday worries and grumbles out, so that I can start with the clean slate of my imagination.  It is also a place where I can write about the problems I might be having with a particular story or project, or acts as a kind of ideas book for new things I might try.  It is a kind of creative mentor, a place to encourage myself, a place to prepare for the joy of creativity.

What?

As I have said above, I don’t just write in my diary.  I draw and stick things in.  I am a very visual person, and sometimes it is easier to record an image of something in my head than to try and write it down.  Usually cartoons are the result of trying to explain a feeling.  Once its out on the page, especially if its a feeling I am having trouble with, like the ‘grumpy bear’ feeling shown in the picture above, it dissipates.

I hand write my diaries.  With a fountain pen.  Partly this is because I feel I want to make something beautiful, and I think handwriting is an act of making art.  But mainly it is because I believe that my hand makes a direct connection with my subconscious brain.  It makes it easier to express what is going on inside – sometimes to express things I don’t even know I am thinking until they come out!

(If you are paranoid about how bad your handwriting is, and use that as an excuse to type, let me assure you that if you continue to neglect it, it will be bad.  I have been practising for thirty eight years.  People say that my handwriting is good.  Practise makes perfect.  And if it isn’t, well, who cares?   Its only you thats going to see it anyway!)

How?

I keep my main journal in a hardback A5 notebook with blank pages.  I am currently using the Moleskine kind, which you can find here.  I like blank pages because I occasionally draw.  I like the A5 size because it is portable and fits in a handbag easily.  I’ve experimented with all shapes and sizes over the years, but this is the one that consistently works for me.

When?

Lots of people begin a diary on 1st January, meaning to write an entry every day.  By about the 15th, they have usually given up.  For some people, it happens every year.

My main rule for journal-keeping is this:

Write when you have something to say.

Don’t feel you have to write some inane babble every day, just for the sake of it, though some people do write every single day and find the discipline invigorating.  I don’t.  If I try that, it becomes a SHOULD and then I very quickly fail.  Don’t set yourself up for a fall.  Write only when you need to.  You will know when that is.  (It has worked for me for 38 years, after all, and I can’t recommend something I haven’t personally tried, can I?)

Journal Friday Exercise:

Do you fancy keeping a journal?  Are the benefits listed above something you would like?  This weekend, why not go out and see if you can find yourself a nice notebook to write in.  Something you are drawn to, that you like to handle and use, but not so beautiful that you are afraid to write in it.  There are all kinds of arguments for different sizes and bindings of notebooks, from paperbacked and spiral bound, to hardbacked tooled leather.  Consider your lifestyle and how you mean to use it.  Do you plan to write it only at your desk, or in bed, or will it need to be sturdy enough to travel around in your bag?  Above all, find something you like.  If you don’t like it, you won’t use it.

Make sure you write your name and contact details inside the cover.  That way, if you lose it, some nice person can always return it to you.

Next Friday, I will offer you a journal prompt to get you going, but if you want to write something in the meantime, either just get going, or think about what you want to get out of writing a diary, and write that down.  And don’t forget to date your entry!

Happy Journalling,

love, Evenlode’s Friend.