I believe there is a
habit shared among writers, one I find myself repeating to no end. It’s to buy
(but not always use) journals and other stationary equipment. There is
something about a fresh, untouched notebook or journal – like a new, unopened
book – that seems to hold all the possibilities of the universe.
There are a number of
different types of journals to keep, and although my inclination is to usually
use them for story notes and ideas, I have found a benefit in using them for
other aspects of my life. Journals have helped me maintain balance in my life,
and helped nurture my creativity. If I focus all my energy on my creative
projects, other aspects of my life begin to suffer. I let the washing grow into
an unmanageable pile, I forget to drink my daily dose of water, I opt out of
social activities and family time, or I neglect to exercise or meditate. Just
as I neglect my writing when work is busy, or I lose track of my goals when
that time of year comes around and it seems like everyone I’ve ever known has a
birthday.
Sometimes life gets out
of balance and there’s nothing we can do about it. Other times, it shifts
because we didn’t make time one day, and it was harder to catch-up the next
day, and before we know it, a week has passed and we’re behind. My washing,
again, comes to mind.
To help with balance, or
practise the habit of writing every day, or to find a specific use for that brand-new
journal you just bought, here are 15 different kinds of journals to keep.
1
Everyday
A journal small (or big)
enough to fit in the bag you take everywhere to help keep track of day to day
things, or simply be there for when you need it. An everyday journal can be
used for to-do lists, shopping lists, music and movie recommendations, dates
and times of important events, or to keep track of habits you want to quit (or
improve).
2
Health
When life gets busy, my
good, healthy habits always seem like
the first to disappear from my day-to-day routines. We all know why health is
important, but from a writer’s perspective, I personally find it makes me more
productive when I maintain my healthy habits. I have more energy to work,
become lethargic less often, and generally maintain a better working mood.
A health journal can help
keep a record of exercise, water intake, daily nutrition, and even new recipes
to try. I combine my health journal with my everyday journal to make my life a
little easier. Keeping on track is also easier when I can tick it off as I go
and reflect back on previous weeks to see improvements. It also makes it easier
to schedule some self-care activities for myself.
3
Finance
My finance journaling is
limited to my fortnightly budget, so, again, I combine it with my everyday journal.
I write up a budget every pay day, and keep track of my spending. Other
suggestions I have found for a financial journal is to note the mood you are in
when you purchase items, or create a colour-coded graph of what type of purchases you make, so it’s easy
to reflect on what you spend most of your money on (it’s food for me) and why
you’re spending it (I like food). If you’re saving toward something – a
holiday, a writing course, a book-shopping spree – a journal can help keep
track how much you contribute each week, how long before you can reach your
goal and what recurring purchases are hindering this goal.
4
Goal Keeping
A goal keeping journal is
exactly what it sounds like. It’s a way to set goals (even big ones) and create
plans on how to reach them. For me, goal setting starts with a big, dream-like
goal. My time frame may be a year, or two, but I like to start with a big
picture of what I want. A weekly planner or a goal-specific journal works best,
I find, as I’m able to set dates and deadlines for what I want to achieve. If I
evaluate my end-of-year goal, I can then break it into steps – monthly, weekly,
and daily tasks. Using a dated journal helps me write out a plan of what I wish
to accomplish for the day. A working day maybe include outlining a blog post
and spending an hour editing my WIP, but a free day on the weekend may include
a couple hours spent on my WIP, finishing off that short story, or completing a
writing exercise just for fun. If I don’t accomplish it, I can carry it on to
the next day or, if it becomes a bigger task than I first anticipated, shift it
to the weekend.
Most of my goals focus
primarily on my creative projects, as I find I need the most motivation there
to complete tasks by certain dates, otherwise I just dally doing the parts I
feel like doing and having fun (still advisable). However, goal journals can be
used for saving, health or fitness, reading, or personal fulfilment.
5
Dreams
There are two kinds of
dream journals – recording dreams or achieving dreams. A journal for recording
dreams is intended to sit by your bed so you can write down your dreams upon
waking, as we often forget them moments after waking. This is a common way to
journal, and there are different reasons for why we might record our dreams.
Some believe our dreams are a window into our subconscious, and analysing them
gives us a peak into what’s going on back there. Others record their dreams
just so they can remember them, or because we have out-of-the-box ideas when we
dream that we might use for later. Or some, like me, attempt to record their
dreams because it’s one of the suggested steps when exploring the concept of
lucid dreaming. And some, like me, barely have the coordination to find their phone
in the morning to check if their late or not, let alone pick up a pen and write.
6
Reflections
Reflections are something
I started as a form of self-care. Self-care became more important for me than
ever this year, I think because I was struggling with how unbalanced my life
felt, and how little writing I was doing. Reflections helped me work through
what I was feeling, and reflect on what was going well in my life. Sometimes
they were a big help, sometimes it felt like I was trying to fix a bullet hole
with a band-aid.
My reflections started on
a particularly bad morning. Feeling incredibly overwhelmed and anxious, I just
opened the nearest notebook I could find and just started writing. I listed
everything, big or small, that I loved about my life. Everything I could think
of, I wrote down. An early morning coffee, breakfast dates, family dinner,
plotting ideas, having good things to look forward to, just small things that I
loved. It was intended as more of a distraction than anything, but it calmed
me. It doesn’t always make the bad days good, but there have been times it’s
made the okay days good, and the good days better. Reflections have helped me
focus on what good came out of the day – to go to sleep thinking of the
positives.
In the case of bad days,
they have been a way to let go of what was troubling me. During some of my
worst days this past year, I had to work very hard to keep what was bothering
me from affecting every other part of my life. So I wrote down what was wrong,
noted reasons why I think something wasn’t working, and tried to set a goal for
what I could do the next day to make it better.
Reflections really helped
me this year, even if sometimes, it was just to distract my wandering mind.
7
Grateful
Much like reflections, a
journal of gratitude is simply a way to count the blessings and remember the
good. I feel, as humans, we almost can’t help ourselves when we focus on the
bad. A perfectly fine day can be ruined by one thoughtless comment from
another, the fresh coffee stain on your favourite shirt, the frantic search for
your keys that almost made you late, hearing the crack of a broken screen after
dropping your phone, a flat tyre, a bad sleep, a cold shower. We can look at
these problems from afar, and they’re tiny, insignificant, but on a stand-alone
day when there’s background noise in our heads making us stressed or anxious or
sad, a small, insignificant problem has a big impact on how we look at a day.
We focus on what was bad, but a gratitude journal can help focus on what was
lovely about it – a cool story idea you wrote down, sweet words from a friend,
a traffic-free drive to work, or simply just the friends and family that you
know are there if you need them.
Recording all the good in
my life really helped me this year, when I think I needed it the most. Keeping
a gratitude journal (or even a jar of notes), came with a surprise I didn’t
expect. Much like a bad day, when a tough year comes to an end, it’s very easy
to reflect on all the things that made it a tough year and the good things
(especially the little things) slip through the cracks in our memory. At the
end of this tough year, I went through my journal of positive reflections, and
had nothing but good memories to think of. It did more for me than I had
imagined it could.
8
Social Planning
A simple journal or weekly
diary to schedule and track social activities can help keep us organised, but
also gives us an insight into how we spend our time, and who we spend it with.
For the creative types, it can double as a memory book, reflecting on the
activity with room for a photo of the day. And if you’re like me, seeking
balance, a social planning journal can help to remind us to make time for those
we haven’t seen in a while, or encourage us to try an activity we haven’t done
this year, or helps keep track of those celebratory dates to spend with the
people we love.
9
Professional Planning
Coming into work in the
morning begins, for me, with writing a list of what I need to do that day, and
prioritising that list. I usually have a list of daily jobs running through my
head on the way to work causing me stress. Writing them down and prioritising
helps me stay focused on one thing at a time, and since my biggest stress is
usually thinking I’ll forget something, and only remember it mid-crisis,
getting it down ensures that doesn’t happen. Some days, I ‘d write down all the
pending tasks I had to do, and would find there were only two or three small
jobs on the list. They caused me more stress than necessary when I was juggling
them around in my head, but once I had them on paper, and I knew I wouldn’t
forget, they suddenly seemed more manageable. Also knowing I have deadlines
written down, and sometimes, even pre-week warnings, keeps me from feeling
overwhelmed.
10
Art Journal
A favourite, although not
something I’ve ever been able to create to my liking, because how I imagine
it’ll look is never how it works out. Art journals can be filled with anything,
from inspirational quotes, to drawings, to collages, to black-out poetry. To
describe it best, I would say art-journaling is just like creating a very
visual journal, creating and filling as your heart desires. Some follow themes
or use different themes for different pages – it’s about whatever inspires you.
Just create.
11
Thoughts
Just thoughts. I always
have a journal on the go for random story ideas and notes, completely uncategorised
and in total chaos. This journal is never pretty, as it’s mostly fast scribbles
that barely make sense. Sometimes, all I need is to physically write something
down in order to remember it, but I also find comfort knowing it’s down,
knowing I can find it again. The down side to this, however, is I have fifteen+
half-finished ‘thoughts’ journals that I refuse to get rid of because I’ve been
intending to convert all the ideas into a digital format for organising and
easy access, but of course I’ve never done it, and I know that one scene I
wrote that one time is in there somewhere.
12
WIP
Every time I start a new
project, or I’m beginning edits, I find a big, A4 notebook to keep with me
during writing, editing, and re-writing. It helps to jot down quick ideas or
notes or intended changes as I go, so as not to break the flow of the work I’m
doing on my laptop. Sometimes, the note might just be a name and description of
a minor character I need to remember for later, or some exposition, so I now I
won’t need to explain it again.
13
Bullet Journal
One of my favourites, and
one you’ve likely heard of and seen and probably tried yourself. Bullet journaling
is about creating visually pleasing layouts for day-to-day entries. A bullet
journal is usually created with a notebook – with grids or lines or dots,
depending on your preference, and they can include whatever the creator wishes.
It can be habit trackers, mood trackers, monthly, weekly or daily layouts,
quotes, books read or books ‘to-read’, and plenty of goal setting.
14
Reading
I like writing down my
thoughts and recording the books I’ve read, sometimes with star ratings. It
helps me also as a writer to take notes of what worked for me as the reader and
what didn’t. I’ve never been a fan of posting reviews online, as I personally
find it hard to criticise a book on a public forum, and if I didn’t write the
negatives as well as the positives, it wouldn’t be honest. My reading journal
is just for me, so I’m as honest as I want to be.
15
Ideas
A journal for ideas can
be similar to one for thoughts but instead of keeping it around for when ideas come to you, create a journal specifically
for coming up with ideas. An idea journal may work best as a daily entry book
and it could be as simple as one sentence, just to make sure you go to bed
knowing you wrote something.
Alternatively, an ideas journal can be used to brainstorm a set number of ideas
each day (even if they’re garbage). If ten ideas seems daunting, aim for five,
or three. It doesn’t matter if they don’t seem good, write them anyway. Something
magical seems to happen when we get started on our own, as opposed to waiting
for inspiration to strike.
I have high hopes (for a
living) that journaling this year will help me find balance in my life. What
reasons do you journal and what are some other kinds of journals you like to
keep?
Comments
Post a Comment