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What is the Point of Keeping a Journal??

What Is the Point of Journaling?
… you may ask. What is the point of spending time trying to write thoughts, ideas, and feelings on the page, particularly when it is hard to do so?

Rather than trying to convince you, let me present you with a listing of  books that have been most helpful to me. The subtitles give some hint as to the value of keeping journals.

Life's Companion, Journaling as a Spiritual Quest by Christina Baldwin. First given to me by a client, this book has become one of my all time favorites. When Christina Baldwin began writing books on journaling, the Library of Congress needed to create a new category of listings.  If you never write down one line, this book is still an excellent treatise on guidance for your spiritual quest. Having given away over a dozen of my copies of this book, I find it still to be the most inspiring book on journal writing.
In Walking in This World, The Practical Art of Creativity, Julia Cameron's finest book, she presents spirituality and creativity as inextricably interwoven. Having read nearly all of Julia Cameron's books on writing, I consider this to be the zenith of her writing and that of greatest depth.  Thirteen chapters, with plenty of white space in the margin for scribbles or notes, this is an excellent book to for shared work with friends or groups.







Henriette Anne Klauser gives us a reason to write – not to record the past, but to record our hopes, wishes, and dreams in her Write It Down, Make It Happen.   She presents the case for writing down the ‘What” of what we want, and letting the “How” appear later.  This book, a quick read, gives an view of increasing the odd of manifesting what we want in our lives by the simple act of writing it down,... being sure to write down all the sensory details. 





For anyone who has asks, what do you do with all those journals, Rosalie Deer Heart and Alison Strickland illustrate a method of reviewing journals and harvesting the "thought seeds" by extracting the important themes, events, and insights recorded in a journal. Not for the faint of heart, these two share their experiences as they commit to finding the worthwhile truths in their journal entries.


These are only four of the dozens of books on my selves that speak to the art of keeping a journal. Any of them, and any of the books listed in the appendix of these books can help you understand the value othes place on keeping a journal.  But only by writing yourself through an event in your lifetime will you come to see the value it has for you. 

Journals are not diaries of daily events, rather they are an expression of the self and the Self, a description of the internal life of the writer. Journal writing appears in the lives of most great leaders, especially spiritual leaders. 

Writing is a way of connecting with the Inner Self and of leaving your mark on this earth as you pass through this lifetime.

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How Many Journals Do You Need?

 Lest you think I have only "A Journal," let me share with you the varieties of journals that I may be keeping at one time. Just as some people have several books that they are reading at one time, I am writing in several journal formats at any point in time for different purposes. Let me count the ways.

1. Morning Pages Journal: Always, there is one primary "morning pages" Journal into which I enter anything from 1 to 3 pages most mornings. At the moment, I’m using a 9 x 12 sketchbook. No lines.  Just blank pages.

2.  Conferences and meetings notebook journal book, I keep one journal book that I take to conferences for notetaking my thoughts and observations about the conference material as well as other thoughts that crossed my mind in the middle of a meeting. The current Conference Journal is a 7 x 10 spiral bound notebook which has the added benefit of having lined pages on the left side and a blank page on the right side. That allows for organized notetaking as well as diagrams, doodles, and Zentangle art.


3.  Waiting Room Journal: Yes, an elegant moleskin, with high quality paper, a gift from a dear friend, serves this purpose. This 5 x 7 notebook travels with me to waiting rooms: a doctor, a dentist, (or THE Ohio State School of Dentistry where the wait usually extends to multi-page writings). Waiting rooms is the one place one can count on waiting and not being disturbed. One day, I managed to write three pages while sitting in the ophthalmologist exam room chair waiting for the doctor’s arrival. 


4.  Dream Journal: A decade ago, I began a separate journal for dreams. Writing the dream themes into my Morning Journal gets them lost among many pages of other notes. For a dream journal I use a 6 x 9 spiral, hard cover notebook with a notation on the front as to its purpose. It lives on my reading stand waiting for the early morning writings.

5.  Retreat Journal: made of totally recycled paper is used only for the yearly solitary wilderness retreats. The 9 by 7 journal fits into a one gallon freezer bag, protecting it from the elements of camping, and allows it to ride safely in backpacks and bicycle pack trips during these retreat weeks.

6. Computer journal: By taking 10 minutes to open a file, speak my mind, then save it as a password-protected document, I can go about my day without trying to process an emotionally charged event that continues to occupy my attention. The computer journal files stored in encrypted formats frees me from worries that information that needs to be private is kept private.

7.  Relationship (Shared) Journal: A shared journal?  Yes, after having entered into a second marriage a little over a year ago, it seemed important to me to have some venue in which each of us could share some of our thoughts about the relationship. It’s the small journal I pull out on Sunday morning to write one page concerning thoughts, observations, and future plans, hopes, wishes or dreams for the relationship. This small journal is where we place mementos of shared events i.e. theater tickets, restaurant souvenirs, etc. and, a sharing of things for which we have great gratitude.


8.  This Blog: From My Chair:  This blog, evolved out of a weekly Sunday morning ritual of writing some of my observations concerning my life and career as experienced from living on the sidelines of other people's lives as a therapist. 


Hmm, I must be keeping Eight different forms of journals in recording my life. It just seems second nature to me at this point after having begun to write one penciled page a week 3 decades ago. 


How can you find that much to write about in ordinary life?

When you write about your life, it does not seem so ordinary. You come to see your life with a greater sense of depth and richness. Additionally, you begin to see patterns, and symbols that are not apparent without taking the time to take note of the moment in which we exist. 

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