To journal or not to journal?

Journals. I love to make them, I love to watch YouTube videos of other people making them. I love paper, fabric, trims, ephemera, any and all materials that can be used, and the whole creative process that goes into making journals. So why, then, haven't I used a journal? What is a journal, really? Is it a diary, a record of events, a planner, a place to store dreams? I write elaborate TO DO lists daily, but I throw them out when they are so crossed out and scribbled on that I can't make sense of what I wrote on them in the first place. Those lists would be the closest thing I have that would chronicle my days, but I don't keep them.


As I recently celebrated a milestone birthday,  I was moved to think back . . . which I seem to do more often lately . . . and I found myself wondering where did my fleeting memories come from? When was that particular event that just came to me from out of the blue?  What evoked the memory? Today I have been daydreaming and recalling the past.


The sound of the blade of the snowplow scraping the pavement on the street jolts me away from my dreamy thoughts and I lose track of the faint memory I was enjoying and look down at the blank page on my legal pad with only the heading "To Do" and today's date written  in large cursive letters and numbers. Yes, I have such important TO DO lists that they require a legal pad! Ha, ha!


So, will today be the day I start to journal? Why? Why not? Actually, I just remembered that I did journal once. I was quite faithful about it, too. If you read my blog post, http://studioemmy.blogspot.com/2018/01/good-gravy.html, you saw the cubby holes I was cleaning out in my studio. Well, one of the finds inside one of the cubbies was a handful of little handmade pages for a journal. Those pages were from my first foray into the world of paper crafting. As I pulled them out, I was transported back to 2012. I inhaled and a long emotional breath escaped from deep inside my chest. I remembered vividly how enraptured I was back then when I discovered YouTube videos by crafters who made show and tell or tutorial videos. It was February and that has always been a good month for me to be creative. I'm usually inside because of the snow and cold and find myself sewing and knitting . . . and since then . . . papercrafting.

Before I knew much about papercrafting, I made these little pages.
Words like chipboard, cardstock, photo mats, pop dots, and pocket pages were all foreign to me.
I found a list I had written with definitions of terms I needed to learn.
My love of pretty paper was finally finding a creative outlet.

I pulled those pages back out this morning and realized I never used them because the original little journal I made had gotten pretty fat; and I just never made new covers to start a second one where I could add the extra pages and continue my journaling. But that is so me. I had learned the process, but not the lesson. Shaking my head and feeling somewhat disappointed in myself, I reached over to my little gallery shelf, where I display things I've made, and picked up my first papercrafting project. It was what people call a junk journal, which is simply an unplanned and random collection of stuff that represents you, your thoughts, events in your life, dreams, and really whatever you want to incorporate into it. I had only a few supplies back then, such as pretty papers, ribbons, rubber stamps, ink and some decorative paper punches and as I learned techniques, I would make a page and I would write about things. Thoughts, events, challenges, successes, dreams. Hmmmmm. Guess what?  I was journaling!

February 2012
My first little journal . . . a junk journal . . . a name I still really don't like.
My life isn't junk and my work isn't either!.

A view from above.
I copied ideas from photos and videos I found online.
It was fun and being an amateur was quite freeing, as I think back on the experience.
I just dove in and made stuff using the supplies I had on hand.

A couple of my favorite pages.
The envelope holds a tag with memories written on it.
The dress form, buttons, and the word "sew" represent my interest in sewing and making clothes.

I had absolutely no idea how to make a binding.
I came up with a creative use of ribbons and embroidery floss.
It worked and I still love it.
It makes me smile.
:-)

 Since I got married, almost 14 years ago, my life has changed dramatically from my single days. There's a lot more to recall now because each day involves not just myself but also my husband. Each day, week, month, year, and now years, is filled with memory making. In fact, recently when recalling something we'd done together, I remarked to my husband that I wish I had kept better records. I wished I had documented things that we'd done together. Not just the big things, but the little things . . . the things that get lost in my memory banks.


I truly think that I misunderstood the whole purpose of journaling. I believe that I thought I had to write deep meaningful and imaginative essays in a journal. I guess I figured I wasn't up to the task, and that what I had to write wouldn't be interesting. I think in the back of my mind I imagined that the kind of journal worth writing would be the kind that one distant day, my descendants would discover in a trunk in the attic. It would be tied up with beautiful ribbons and smell like old paper and ink and reveal deep inspiring thoughts that would cause them to weep. Oh my glory! This is true. This is the reason I have not journaled! This is the lesson.


To top it off, I recalled how much I have enjoyed reading my parents' diaries. The stuff they wrote about was not poetic, nor did they reveal tightly held secrets on those pages. Their diaries told about their days, just like what I did in my first little junk journal. My father was more inclined to write about his work as a farmer. He recorded the purchase of tractors, combines, the sale of 20-ton loads of hay, and the funny daily entry all winter long that simply stated "graded pot", which was his abbreviation for potatoes. My mother wrote more from an emotional standpoint, but still nothing secretive. She recorded what time she got up, where she went, who she visited and where she stayed for weeks at a time to help out an ailing friend or relative . . . and it seems she was always going somewhere . . . that she stayed up until 4 a.m. playing cards and went out for rides cross-lots in the horse-drawn cutter when there was a lot of snow. That is what she wrote before she got married. After she was married she wrote less frequently, but one of my favorites is when she recorded that she had put the water in the reservoir on the cast iron cook stove in the summer kitchen to heat it up for the next day's laundry. :-) Their lives look different to me now when I can get a little glimpse into their days. They didn't write in their diaries for me, though. They wrote in them for themselves and left them behind when they passed away.


So, what shall I do? I have today. This day. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Today. I will journal. I won't just make pretty journals as gifts or to display on my gallery shelf, I will use them. I'll write in them, stuff them with unrelated things. Things that mean something to me, such as my messy To Do lists, receipts from a big purchase or a trip, a recipe, a photo of us doing something together, a funny little story. These journals will be mine. They will be for me. And I will enjoy looking back a year from now, five years from now and enjoy the memories. And, should my descendants discover them one day, they might weep or laugh or just smile as they read the pages.

The mini album / journal that I started about 3 weeks ago is finished!
I put it aside for a couple weeks, but then I was inspired to finish it this week because I did not want it to be forgotten while I jumped into another project. I made myself use only materials I had on hand, much like my first journal. I will start using it right away to record my 2018 gardening journey.

I tried some new-to-me techniques on this project.
I added the little brad with the ring on it to the binding and made a dangle charm in a garden-theme.
I included a little bottle filled with milkweed seeds and fluff from last year's garden.
I plan to make a short YouTube video to show the details of this project.
Stay tuned! 

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post. As always, your questions and comments are welcome. And, until we meet again, may the Lord hold you in the hollow of His hand.


Emmy