January is National Journal Writing month.
There are many reasons to keep a journal, many kinds of journals and subjects for them.
In the old days, I called it a diary. I had one as a kid, that I rarely wrote in except to record that I went to school and how mean Mom was because wouldn’t let me do something I wanted to do.
I started journaling as an adult years ago. They were personal journals where I worked out problems, tried to answer my questions, and explored ideas for personal development. What I wrote was never meant for anyone’s eyes except my own.
I filled up over twenty of those personal journals. And then I stopped. Not because I had solved all my problems, or had answers or didn’t need personal development, but because I wanted to write about other things. I read all those journals before I destroyed them. It was a fascinating exercise, painful at times, hilarious at others. The stuff I worried about!
I took a class years ago where one of the instructors showed us the journals he was writing for his children. They were gorgeous - hard bound, unlined and filled with the most beautiful handwriting I had ever seen. Not like mine that had scribbles and scrawls in different ink that either crawled up the page or drifted towards the bottom.
It doesn’t matter what your journals look like or what you put in them. They are uniquely yours. The notebooks you choose to work in, whether you use words or pictures, whether they are neat or messy, no matter the color of ink or pencil. They are yours, just for you.
In future posts, I’ll write about other kinds of journals that I keep.
Do you use a journal?
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Lynn H. Wyvill grew up in Washington DC where her favorite activity was sitting under a Japanese red maple tree, watching clouds create pictures in the sky. As a writer, she finds peace and inspiration when hiking in the woods, strolling on sandy beaches, and observing nature’s show in her backyard. Those experiences are captured in her first book, Nature’s Quiet Wisdom. Before writing books, Lynn worked as a radio/TV reporter and writer for the US Department of Agriculture and owned a consulting business that trained professionals on the creation and delivery of effective presentations. She is a lifelong learner, avid reader, small town explorer, and dedicated theater attendee who lives in beautiful Virginia with her husband.