I know from personal experience how great and how fun journaling can be. And also how helpful it can be.
I have been keeping a journal for almost 50 years. oh. my. fucking. god. Forget I just wrote that, because I can't be that old. No way. Not me. I can't be...
(Here, you should have heard the soft noise of my now unconscious body collapsing on the floor like some old wet rag, after my poor brain went off realizing I was really starting to get old)
What was I saying? Something about me having been keeping a journal for quite some time and how fn and helpful it had been.
And that is something that makes me sad when I see no activity going on in our little journaling community, here on Lemmy. Even more so, knowing that our cousin from reddit r/Journaling is doing quite well.
But I also know how daunting it can be to start writing in a journal — what am I supposed to write about? Nothing happens in my life! Why? How? And how can I prevent people to read my most intimate thoughts? How can I make it interesting? How can I not screw the page by making mistakes!? — and I know how it can be intimidating to post personal stuff online, and alone, too.
I started wondering if maybe all we needed was someone to start sharing stuff, talking about stuff and maybe start asking questions in order to get others to do the same?
To the best of my (limited) abilities, I want to ry that and maybe encourage people that may still hesitate to start journaling to do it, and also to encourage anyone to discuss about journaling. And to do it here, not on reddit.
So, even though I have no clear idea what I will post beside the next couple posts, I will try to regularly post stuff, hopefully encouraging others to do the same, or to comment, or to laugh, or whatever — as long as it’s done with a positive spirit, we should all get something out of it.
At the very least, the more we post here the more likely we are to encourage others to join and to participate.
BTW, if you don't speak French, the picture of my journal used as an illustration to this post is asking a very simple question right next to the tin can phone I sketched, which is: Allo?... With who (will I be discussing)?
I have had quite a few years long break in the process. As I see journaling, that's part of the deal: it's not my job and if it's too hard or too... not interesting to do it at certain moments, well, I don't do it. The thing is that I always came back to it.
if nothing else, it’s a way to put chaotic monkey mind into some kind of order
Yep.
i used to use moleskine books, but switched to a brand called minimalism art, which are just as good quality, but not nearly as expensive
I have never myself been a huge fan of Moleskine simply because their paper doesn't play nice with fountain pens. It's fine with ballpoints, though.
I will try to see if I can find this 'minimalism art' but I don't think I have ever seen one around here.
BTW, if you or anyone else is looking for some cheap (at least, here in France and The Netherlands) very good quality notebooks, with good fountain pen friendly paper, you may want to have a look at the 'Art Creation' line.
In reality, they're sketchbooks and not notebooks, from Royal Talens, a brand that makes art stuff, paints and stuff like that. Their sketchbooks (from A6 to A4 in size) all have 160 pages of 120gsm buttery smooth plain paper (cream colored, as you can see in my photo). It's good enough to withstand some light washes if you're into watercolors. So, they've zero issue dealing with fountain pens. I really like them.