Sunday, August 28, 2016

Journal Progress

As you can probably gather from the last post summer has been a bit rough. But we've made it so far and times will get better soon. In the meantime I found ways to channel my stress into things more productive and creative. I posted in March about trying out art journaling. I kind of took that project and ran with it. Little did I know into what rabbit hole I was descending. I'm still working in the journal shown in the March post. I'm now also working in a bound mixed media journal (actually two) from Dylusions and a modified No Excuses Journal using the Arc system by Staples. One of the Dylusions journals is my Art Journal BOS and the No Excuses has turned into a gratitude journal, a way to let go of the retail job and be thankful for the little things. Just this week I also started something called a bullet journal (or Bujo) to keep track of my creative work. I'm hoping that with a checklist I'll accomplish more than scrolling FB or Pinterest. Getting check marks in the journal will motivate me to create and not dwell on the mundane stuff I let drag me down on a daily basis.

My original spiral-bound journal is in stages of done varying from not-at-all to a couple of completed pages. Oh, and it is no longer a spiral having been taken in and out of the spiral enough times to ruin the metal. Once I've finished all the pages I'll put them back together with some pretty ribbon or string. For now, here are a few of the pages from my first journal. Next time I'll share some of my BOS and my Gratitude NEJ.

Barely started
Made a little more progress


A completed page!

That completed page was my thoughts at the time about the Brexit vote. I don't live in England and didn't really know much about it before the vote. But I do have family there. After they voted leave, I was curious to know what it meant for them, what it meant for the EU. I know my opinion on it won't mesh with some others. I personally believe in the long run it will be a bad idea for the country and Europe as a whole. It has already been bad for the economy and some of the non-white citizens in the short term. The level of nationalism and hate I saw in news stories was quite disappointing (and very familiar). We're about to have a similar decision to make here in November and I dearly hope we don't make the same one. My journaling this summer has been very therapeutic and I plan to do as much of it as I can while finally getting my writing ass in gear with a couple of books.