Hi, everyone!
This week we’ve got a podcast episode for you, so sit back with a nice cup of tea (or insert your AirPods and do the dishes) while we discuss journaling. We cover why to keep a journal, what kind of journals we keep, and our plans for destroying our journals when the time comes.
We love your comments, so be sure to leave one!
Your friends,
Kristin and Frances
The mystery has been solved! Thanks for doing our research for us, Robin!
LOVE the new podcast format of your communications … always love a listen so I can listen while I stitch
Itried to find yuor podcastt on my phone. I can’t remember what podcast collection site I use, but it works for all the other ones I listen to. Your podcast didn’t come up. I listen to Simple Handmade Everyday from this same thing.
I have been writing in a journal for several years. I started with a journal of my sons progress and activities and segued to a me journal about 10 years ago. I write in a journal that has one page for each day, thoughts and activities, like a sentence on what project I worked on that day. I also keep track of trips, nights at our vacation house, and restaurants, Why, I don’t know! This year I found a Book Journal on Amazon, with space for 100 books. I love being able yo keep track of books read, comments, etc. and I bought an extra journal that I didn’t like so I use it as an exercise tracker, which is keeping me on track. I don’t know if anyone will ever read any of this, but I don’t care! To me, writing my thoughts is a catharsis.
Great topic and great to listen to the interplay between the two of you!
I enjoyed your conversation! It was the perfect accompaniment to some tricky knitting I had to keep my eye on. I keep a day book, using bullet points, not complete sentences. But for quilts and knitting projects, I keep an Excel spreadsheet with all the details, dates various stages are completed (blocks made, quilt top assembled, etc.). I also keep pictures of my quilts and knitted items in folders in iCloud by year. I also keep an Excel file for books I’ve read (mainly so I won’t keep checking out the same titles!). I have kept true journals only a few times, like after the birth of my second child and following my hysterectomy. I have shared the latter with friends facing that surgery, and they (claim to!) have found it helpful. Oh, and I keep favorite quotes, poems, etc. in Notes on my phone. Thanks for letting us listen in!
I use a 98-cent notebook and my favorite Pilot 5 pen or mechanical pencil to reflect on things I’m reading or to consider goals and dreams. January 1, 2020 I began recording daily tidbits in a five-year diary. Mostly I planned to track natural events, like when the lake thawed and water fowl returned to our neighborhood. But it’s my pandemic record of life and the horrible tragedy of George Floyd’s murder and riots in our city. And then an abrupt move to life in the country. Now I look back and think, “No wonder everyone needs to recover at least bits of sanity.” This year my jottings are about unusual sightings of robins during January – the welcome mundane observations that only my husband and I care about.
I’m also the family photographer and chronicle everyday life and friendships in memory albums. I’m so far behind after the iPhone entered my world, so I plan to get back at it this year. This is where I record how much I love my husband and children, our extended family and friends. I want to remember the times we gathered just because we could.
My great grandma left behind a journal that gave great insight into her faith and prayer life. She lived to be 101 and prayed for her extensive family. My grandma left a diary and it was filled with “cleaned the house” most days. She loved my grandpa and showed it by taking care of him and their home. She also told me it was how she served God, doing her work as if it were for him. The exciting days were rare visits from her sisters and their families who would drive from St. Paul to visit their sister on the farm and play croquet.
My husband is the true journal keeper. I don’t ask him about what he writes because I know it’s where he processes his feelings. (I’m too private to write down the kind of things that shouldn’t be read by others.) Before his mom passed away, he gave her a blank journal and asked her to write in it for him about anything. He was so disappointed to find a blank book when she was gone. So your story of blank journals was particularly interesting and sad.
Words are powerful. It’s helpful to write and always remember who could be our audience.
Comments are closed.
Robin Leftwich
Ok I looked it up. Difference in journal and diary is apparently a hot topic but consensus seems to be that a diary is an accounting if daily events and a journal contains additional things like thoughts ideas etc. a journal is a diary but a diary is not always a journal