For most of my life I have kept journals. I've gone through phases
where I will write every single day, and then other times I will
write only when I have a song/poem idea, or if I am especially
stressed. But for the past couple years, I have hardly journaled at
all; apart from jotting down song ideas and things of that sort. I
had made a resolution in 2019 to write every single day, mostly
about my daughter. I did well for a couple months, but stopped
writing once my dad died. I think at the time writing didn't really
make a lot of sense. My emotions were all over the place, but since
I was surrounded by family and childhood friends, they didn't find
themselves into writing. His passing broke the habit, and until
recently I hadn't made much of an effort to pick it back up.
I am not sure what prompted me to start keeping a regular journal
again. It kind of just happened. I guess it was just the right
time. But I have adopted a few methods to help me stay on top of
the many loose ends in my life. I kept hearing about "Bullet
Journals" on gemini and elsewhere, so I decided to check it out,
and frankly, I was really turned off at first. At first glance, it
appeared as some sort of brand, which is unintersting to me. When I
first visited their website, a quoted review about the method
really drove me away though. It said something to the effect of
"not only will bullet journaling make you better at getting things
done, it will make you a better person." Maybe I am missing some
context, but I am always wary of claims like that.
I disregarded bullet journals after that, but I kept hearing about
them so I eventually gave them another looksee. It turns out there
were a few aspects of the system that appealed to my needs as a
desperate and unfulfilled graduate school plankton. I'm not sure
these are even unique to bullet journals, but they have been
interesting to try. One of the main ideas of that system is to keep
a single journal that does it all. It serves as a planner, an
archive, a diary, or whatever else you need it to be. It's just a
book, though. What facilitates this is keeping an index, which is
something I would have never bothered to do with a journal! It's
quite handy actually. If you write all kinds of stuff in your
journal, then it makes it much easier to find all the related
pieces. So anywhere I have scribbled a song idea, or a poem, or
ideas for my paper, etc., I update the appropriate entry in the
index. It's a small amount of work for quite a large payoff.
Another aspect of bullet journaling I have adopted is the
integration of a planner within the journal. I keep a six-month
projective calendar for a birds-eye view of what big events I need
to anticipate, and I keep a monthly calendar where I plan out what
I need to do and when. I also write brief, shorthand summaries of
each day there as they pass. It's actually surprising how much more
effective this has been for me. Prior to using smart phones, the
extent of my "planning" was in the form of dates with lots of stars
drawn around them on random pages in random journals, notebooks,
etc. The thing about digital calendars, for me, is that...well, I
don't check them. That's a funny irony of all this convenience. It
just works, it's always on...so you end up not caring about it. But
writing things out by hand and actually designing it all yourself
is not only fulfilling, but it forces you to check and care about
things.
Since I have been living in my journal a little more, I have done
some housekeeping as well. If you're going to spend time somewhere,
you ought to make it nice and comfortable. So I'm taking more time
to just, write and make fun headings, borders, etc. Nothing fancy,
really. It's all very basic and functional, but it makes a
difference. I think it was in an essay by A. A. Milne called "Not
that it Matters" where they talk about writing for the joy of it.
Not just the satisfaction of having writen something, and the
praise you might get for it. But the joy of physically writing and
being with your thoughts and feelings. I think this has been the
main draw back to journaling for me. I really lost that, especially
once I started working overtime on my research---everything got
pushed to the margins until eventualy everything else just fell off
the page. So I'm reclaiming that space and attention and care by
writing everyday.
