Why do you keep a journal? What is it that YOU want to accomplish with it?
For me, working in my journal is an indispensable part of my own journey - this fat messy book feels like a friend with whom I get to have a dialog every day.
This book listens to me with no judgment, takes any griping I need to dish out, receives my messy collagey experiments and even is kind enough to save them for future reference.
The big stack of journals shows me that I accomplished SOMETHING in all these years of rushing about, doing this and that, raising a family, moving from Maryland to Indiana to New Jersey, trying to make art and sense of all the commotion that is our lives these days.
and my book is my own chance for self-expression. Sometimes what I say is not what I want to revisit - and a friend at our group last night said how she paperclips pages that have damaging material closed so she will not accidentally see them and evoke negatives that she is working hard to keep under control.
What I loved about her idea is that we are in control of what is in our journals.
We can remove pages if we want, we can work over them, we can erase, and cover things.
but we are always free to explore anything in our journals - free to say whatever needs saying at the moment, knowing either we can keep it forever, or remove it later.
There is total safety in our book!
SO let your journal help you understand yourself more.
Comments are very appreciated - I love to know someone is reading this!