write in my journal every day

When I’m done this current one, then I’ll be done this goal. I have several differently-themed diaries and journals to write in also. Maybe I’ll incorporate them into this goal? We’ll see.

I had another goal to be more positive, but just writing in it was enough so I thought I’d trade goals.

I want to start writing an entry each night. To help me keep things in perspective. When I wasn’t in school last fall, I wrote several long, meaningful entries. But from this spring, I have two, and both are about how depressed I am. That doesn’t convey how I’ve actually felt this semester. I’d like to actually record my happiness with how my life is right now, and not just my worst moments.

Making a list of daily goals is helping me get A LOT done. It’s at least as useful as preparing a list before you go to the grocery store.

I already write in notebooks a lot, but I want to keep up with one SPECIFIC journal on a daily basis. This will be for goal-setting and recording my progress.

I’ll consider this goal complete when I’ve stuck with it for two months. The habit should be well ingrained by then. It will also give me time to see the results.

Start date: February 12th
End date: April 12th

first words…
it’s seems like I have nothing to write !

I found a book to write in,
I will start today :)

I have neglected this. Last night I started again, filling a page with words and colorful drawings. I need to be certain to do this everyday. It works better that way.

I’ve kept journals in the past – as recently as the beginning of this year. It made me feel calm to write in it, but neurotic at the same time, as if writing down what was going on in my life made it all come into greater focus and I had to analyze each detail. The whole point of journalling is that I love the sound of words. I wanted to be writing narratives, writing for the pleasure of crafting sentences. Instead, my journal became a rant, a whine against everything going wrong (or occasionally a girlish sigh at the things going right). Worse off than the advice column of Seventeen! magazine, because I couldn’t give myself any more advice than endlessly circling the paths I’d chosen or neglected.

My hope, this time, is to avoid self-analysis where possible and just write for the joy of it. Tomorrow is Dec. 1 and I love beginnings like that. We’ll see how it goes.

Yesterday I promised myself some things, publicly, here at 43Things. Goals, we call them. The first is coming back to morning pages—my own, not Julia Cameron’s. Though her book The Artist’s Way is what inspired me originally, and what names the process.

Over coffee I will write for the benefit of having put pen to paper. As the days dawn, I shall write…

I wrote three pages about my stated goals, how I might pursue them, their importance to me. I can see possibilities for blog posts on those pages already. Not developed, but the seeds are there.

I have plenty to do today… no time for boredom.

Of course, I’m never bored…