“Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.” – Christina Baldwin
Journals are designed to capture tidbits from the flow of our days. Some people like to let their journals spread across time boundaries until the journals are full; other people like to start a new journal every year.
I prefer the journal per year approach and one of my favorite times of the year is the period between my birthday in mid-December and the first days of a new year. I revel in that slow time of reflection on the past and aspiration for the year to come. During that period, I gather the thoughts and inspirations from the previous year and set up my journal for the coming year.
One of the best parts of the process is setting up my “touchstone” pages, those pages I want to refer back to frequently over the year. You may want completely different pages to refer back to, however, below are three examples that are in the front of my journal.
Opening pages:
** On the inside cover is a photo of a piece of art I like. This year it is a beautiful sprite blowing wishes into the world.
** On the first inside page, normally the “return to owner page,” for 2023, there are two stickers: “Say yes to new adventures.” and “Progress not perfection.”
There’s also a quote: “The trail is beautiful. Be still.” — Dakota
** First touchstone page is for Aspirations. I leaned on stickers to help me create a page that telegraphed aspirations with enough open space to add other thoughts as the year progresses.
** The next page is a poem from the Navajo that I want to read frequently throughout the year: “In Beauty May I Walk.”
** The next touchstone page is reversible: One way it’s what I want to feel. Turned upside down, it’s what I want to know.
** The next touchstone page contains five lists exploring who I am, again designed to be added to over the year.
There is another group of Touchstone pages at the end of the journal. We will share some of them in a later post.
To see more ideas about different ways to use your journal, check out Noted, the newsletter by Jillian Hess, a New York based writer and English professor at CUNY who has been researching and writing about notebooks and note-taking for the past two decades. Her newsletter is a treasure of ideas from people like Octavia Butler, Rosa Parks, Charles Darwin, Jim Morrison, Agatha Christie, and others.
And, remember: You are a complex, multi-faceted creature. Journaling helps you see and appreciate the many layers and facets of your brilliance, gradually guiding you to your best self and your best life.
What touchstone pages do you want in your journal?
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