Addicted to Journaling???

Surely NOT!  Yet that's what TWO SEPARATE PEOPLE told me, and I don't think they knew the other said it.  And...before either of them said it, I think I might have approached the idea to myself, but of course the idea was so unthinkable that I shot it down immediately.  (I will not have myself telling myself ridiculous things.)

This is what has happened, you see.  Sunday night, I spent the night at the home of some church friends, just for fun, and Monday morning, I did not put some things back into my bag, and I left them at their house!

Would you like to hear what I left?  (It was a lot.)

1. My Bible
2. My journal
3. A devotional book
4. Another devotional type book
5. A pack of pens
6. More pens
7. Boots

The first two on that list are basically, I think literally, the MOST IMPORTANT MATERIAL ITEMS IN MY LIFE.  I do mean that quite literally!  I would rather go a week without my phone than a week without either my Bible or my journal.

Oh, but I forgot to finish this heart-wrenching story.

Monday morning, before I left their house and headed to work, I was told of a concert their two girls would be in on Tuesday evening, the following day.  "Why yes," I thought to myself, "I'd LOVE to go," and when they asked, I told them so!  (I never like to miss an opportunity to see them.)

Well, after leaving their house, halfway to work, I had the dreadful realization that I had left my things at their house.  I was, however, put somewhat* at ease by the thought that I would get them back the following evening, if I could go to the concert.  Admittedly, my things were now half of the reason I wanted to go!

*"Somewhat" is the key word here.  I was still FREAKIN' OUT, MAN!  Two days is a long time to go without journaling, or my Bible, though I can read others' Bibles.

I cleared it with my parents, and I, and my sister Patience, went to the concert.  Oh, the girls did SO well!  I was (am!) SO proud of them!  I almost cried, I'm so proud of them!  They did so well, in fact, that by the end of the concert, I had completely forgotten about retrieving my things, and so had the Mrs.  I did not remember, even, during the time that we spent with the family at Chick-fil-A afterwards.  When I finally remembered, we were far too many miles and minutes down the road, in the opposite direction as our friends, and ALAS, it was far too late to turn around.

My realization the previous morning had indeed been dreadful, but this, oh, this realization was DREADFUL!  I wailed and moaned to my sister, and took on a thick, albeit fake, New York accent.  ...It comforted me in my distress, okay?  When Patience was not sympathetic enough and had the nerve to laugh at me in my utter misery, I called up my good friend Ella, and wailed to her, keeping up my accent, of course, and by and by, I began to feel better.  (These two, Ella and Patience, are the two who had the hairbrainedness to say I was addicted.)

Well, I surely can't tell how it means I'm addicted just because I use my journal for everything and use it to its full advantage and can't function without it.  It's a life saver, really.  When I have a thought, a fear, a triumph, or anything else you might imagine, I write it down.  If it's remotely significant, I write it down.  When I need a list, I write it down.  I sometimes even, when I write things other places, will glue them into my journal. 

There's this craze going around about bullet journaling.  The thing about it is that you can do everything in it.  Whatever you need: lists, drawings, thoughts.  You name it, and the bullet journal swoops to the rescue.  Well, I'm not sure what the big deal is about the bullets - lines work just as well for me - but I suppose I use my journal exactly as a bullet journal is meant to be used.

Without it, life spins out of control.  And I was most likely going to have to go until the end of this week to get it back.

But let us finish our story with a happy ending.  On Wednesday morning, the Mrs. texted me and told me that her mother was coming to Wake Forest to visit a friend, and would drop it off where I work!  (Who's the life saver now?)  LET ME TELL YOU, I WAS EXCITED.  When she finally arrived, I squealed, she gave me my things, I hugged her, and all was right in the world.

The End.

P.S.  Watch for another post soon, basically just an update on my life, because it doesn't seem right to come back after so long an absence and not tell you what's happ'nin'.  Plus much has changed since my last post.

Introducing...My Art Journal!

Buddabum buddabum buddabuuumm...  I done started an ART JOURNAL!  "...We so exciiited, we so exciiited..."  I had this adorable turquoise journal, completely blank, on my shelf, that I wasn't really sure how to use because it's so big.  You can see how adorable it is from that picture right up ther'.  See that monster?  So! cute!  Into my art journal, it was transformed!

This post will have a lot of pictures, because I'm showing y'all all the pages I've done so far in my art journal, which is quite a few at this point.  For the first three pages, I cut out pictures and words from magazine pages and sort of made a collage on each page.  This magazine had so much good stuff to cut out!

As with a lot of things, I was inspired (sort of indirectly, if I remember correctly) to start one mainly by Jennie at Little Girl Designs.  She's been the inspiration for a bunch of my art projects, and I'm so thankful for that!

This was specifically inspired by her post on How to Make an Inspiration Board, one of the challenges for her Creative Play Challenge.  What ha' happe'ed wuas, I wanted to make an inspiration board-type-thing, with a theme of things that make me happy, or things that I love, something along those lines, but I didn't want to make it on a board.  What better place to do it, if not on a board, than in an art journal?!  I had been thinking about starting one for a while, so this was the perfect opportunity!

So I cut out a bunch of words and pictures along that theme.  This isn't a great picture because of the glare, but hopefully you can read the words.

Many of these words I didn't use, or haven't used yet, and that's fine!  Their time shall come.

I love this one.  :)

I had been planning to put everything I'd cut out into one collage on one page, but it wasn't working for me.  There were definitely some different color schemes and such going on, and I thought each group needed a page to itself.

I knew I wanted these three pictures together.  They all go so! well! together!

So this is what I came up with...

The next one was just words cut out to make a sentence, and I really like the sentence.  :)

I thought the words needed something behind them, so...I doodled a background.

After gluing them down, I thought they still needed to stand out a little more, so I outlined them.

I like to find creative ways to put in the date, so I squished it in the edge of the doodle like this!  You can also see that I added inside circles to the edging circles, so they look like doughnuts!

Time for the third page!  I love how well each of the pieces go together!  That painting snippet goes perfectly with the words "beautiful spontaneity," don't you think?

These are all the sharpies I used on this page...

Aaand, the finished product!

This was a big flower I made when I was younger, and I had it on my shelf for years.  I kept it, thinking I could someday use it in some art project.  Well, the day finally arrived!  I just glued it in and then wrote a bunch of words around it (and doodled some).  I like to write words...

On the same shelf as the flower, I had this pooh card, which was a thank you from when I gave a painting to a couple in our church.

And, on that very same shelf! was an old birthday card from my parents, that I loved so much I just couldn't put it back in my letter box after I received it!

And you can pull the card out!

And...the other side.  (My pop has nice handwriting.)

This was the handout from my friend's history presentation.  I was going to throw it away with all the other handouts...*clears throat nervously* but then I discovered something crazay!  Where water was spilled on the gray areas, it turned a light green!  So of course I had to play with it some.

The following three pages are cards that me and my little friend from church made when she came to my house.  She drew this one.  (I looked.)

I drew this one.

Aaand, she drew this one!

Alrighty, can anyone guess how I did this one?  Hmm...YES!  I had to get my whole hand painty!  Which is, um, kind of the point!

Look at that.  Ain't it purdy?!  I love getting messy with paint.  :)

These are a couple of origami birds my sister gave me over Christmas break when she was de-cluttering her room.  Her friend made them for her about fifteen years ago, which explains why she wouldn't want to throw them away!

Even though this is a pretty, um, boring page, I like it because it shows that even as a youngun, I liked to come up with new ideas and execute them.  These were scraps of wallpaper glued onto index cards.

This is a drawing given to me years ago by another Maggie!

Ooohhh, okay, this, honey darlin', is sooo cool.  I'm doing a post on this technique in the near future, so I won't explain it here, but trust me, it's sooo cool, and sooo fun!

Look at that texture!

So simple, yet one of my favorites.  :)  I cut letters out of scrap photos I had printed onto regular cardstock.

Whyyy I feel the need to keep some of the things I keep...sometimes passes my understanding.  But nevertheless!  I kept this "list of priorities" and a "texting schedule" I made a few weeks ago, and inserted them into the art journal!  But I first painted the background with turquoise watercolors, and I'm so glad I did.

All opened up!

As you can see by this point, it's less of an art journal, as it was originally meant to be, and more just a perfect place to put miscellaneous flat objects that need a home.  Though I do try to make every page artsy in some way.  Hopefully you can also see that it does not have to be hard!

Does this make you want to start an art journal?

Journaling ~ What to Write?

I love the feeling of a pen in my hand.  I feel safer with a sharpie at my disposal.  That's part of why I love journaling, and letter writing, and writing blog drafts (on real paper).

It's addicting, almost.  Where most people nowadays find it hard to get off their devices, I find it hard to get off my journal, whether writing or reading it, and I am totally fine with that!  (Although, it is sort of a waste of time to sit for an hour reading my own thoughts when I should be doing homework...)

I recently wrote this post about journaling, listing all the reasons you might have for needing to journal.*  But, I did not go into what you could journal about, which seems to be a major roadblock to many people who would like to get into journaling.  So, I came up with this very long list of things to journal on, just to get you started!

*I'm not actually saying every single person absolutely needs to journal.  Maybe you like gardening, or building, or driving, or whatever else.  What I'm saying is, journaling isn't for everyone.  People say they'd like to journal, but either a) don't have time, or b) don't know what to write about.  Well, the fact is, if you really want to enough, you'll make it happen!  If, deep down, you really don't feel like journaling, and you have plenty of other things to occupy your time, then you're probably not going to get to journaling.  And you know what?  That is fine.  Journaling is a kind of therapy, and maybe it's not your preferred form.  That is okay.  Alright, rant over.  :)

For those of you who find it hard to think of things to write about, maybe this is what you find yourself staring at when you sit down to write:

And then, after staring at it for long enough, you decide to close it up, and you're looking at this:

You don't want that.  (I hope not, at least!)  So, I'm here to help you be able to look at something like this:

As you can see, you don't have to write all fancily or prettily, in words you say or the way they look on the page.  This your journal.

Sooo, here (finally) is a list of possibly all the things anyone could think up to journal about/on, so you can sit down to write, and write.

What to Journal About/On

• Lists
• Happy lists
• Sad lists
• Favorites lists
• Season (you know mine!)
• Colors
• Holidays
• Siblings (ha! jk)
• Shoes
• Memories
• Thankfulness lists
• Fears lists
• What do you wonder about?  Write about it!
• Secrets - duh.
• Prayers to God
• Letters to people, like...
• Friends
• Celebrities
• Your younger/older self
• Your children (whether or not you have them)
• Your spouse (^^^)
• People you'll never see again
• People you see everyday
• Total strangers
• Memories
• What you did today
• Imaginary conversations
• How (and why?) you don't want to eat your veggies
• All your problems with broccolli
• Rants on what makes you happy
• All your wonderments
• All you wanderments
• Quotes you like
• What makes you...
• Angry
• Jump for joy
• Nervous
• Sad
• Your life...
• Plans
• Ambitions
• Dreams
• Hopes
• Goals
• Special verses
• Devotionals
• Just doodle, or whatever.  Don't even write if you don't want to.
• Your crazy ideas that you're too embarrassed/ashamed to tell anyone else (or maybe you wisely decide not to?)
• Your plan to take over the world (gotta write these things down so you don't forget, ya know?)
• Whatever you're obsessed with
• What you're eating for lunch tomorrow (or yesterday, or right now)
• What if you lived in an alternate universe?
• Praises to God
• Observations
• Why you're passionate about whatever you're passionate about
• Mind map
• Brainstorm
• Experiences
• What would your perfect day be like?
• Ideal...
• Day
• Summer
• Week
• Pie
• Weather
• What are all the things you want to be "when you grow up"?  (Whether or not you've already grown up)
• Expectations for the future
• Struggles
• Free write
• Post on social media every day?  Write in your journal what you would post on social media.  (Probably all your friends don't mind if you neglect to tell them your two cents about life for just one day.)
• And um, so much more!

Hopefully this has whet your appetite!  Then, later on, you can look at this again, satisfied this time, knowing you done wrote in your journal!  *high five!*:

There are literally a thousand things you could write about in your journal.  This was only a few of them.  Or, this was all (?) of them, but generalized.  Okay, no, let's be real.  This only scratched the surface of what you can write in your journal!  Hopefully I've inspired you, and you can come up with even more things to write about!

Basically, you can write about ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING you want!

What are your favorites from the list?  What can you add to the list?

You Need to Journal If...

I didn't use to journal much.  It's not like I didn't want to.  In fact, I've always liked the idea, I think.  But for the longest time (meaning up until, like two months ago), I only kept a journal sporadically and only wrote when I would die if I didn't.  (Strangely, I very often now feel like I'll die if I don't write.)

It ain't gotta be fancy.  I use a plain ol' spiral noteook!

But lately, I've wanted to get into it more, not just as an occasional thing, but an almost every day kind of thing.  And man, I am so glad I've jumped into it!  When I used up my little purse journal in early August, I began a new purse journal, and simultaneously, a new start to journaling!

This "new" journal I began again in, was actually an old, unused journal I still had from years ago, that I had written verses in at the top of each page (except for the last few), which is just perfect!

If you're wondering why it's blurry, it's because no, you may not read my journal.  Ha!

Wewere at a friend's (multiple friends, actually) house last weekend, and amidst doing homework pondering life upstairs on Saturday night, I came up with a long list of reasons YOU need to journal!  Because I really think journaling is so beneficial.  All Most of these apply to meself too!*  Here's the list (I'm not referring to the picture...).  :D

I wrote this list for Jennie's Creative Play Challenge, week two.

*If all of these apply to you, please go turn yourself into jail before taking over the world.  Thx.

You Need to Journal If...

• You feel guilt when you write suuuper long letters to friends because you're afraid of boring them, but you need to write it all down.
• You have big dreams.
• You have words practically pooping out of your brain and YOU JUST NEED TO LET THEM OUT.
• You're an emotional teenage girl.
• You're an emotional human being.
• You have a disorganized brain.
• You feel like no one else understands you (this would also be a fantastic time to talk to God + read the Psalms).
• You want to practice your handwriting doing something productive.
• You want to be able to write and not care how your handwriting looks.
• You have lots of secret thoughts and must tell someone, but there's no one you want to tell.
• You have secret evil plans to take over the world.
• You are super duper annoyed about someone/something, but you don't want to gossip to others.
• You've pledged to keep a secret, but you HAVE to tell someone.  RIGHT NOOOW.  (And who better to tell than yourself?)
• You want your life story recorded for future generations.
• You want to be remembered in history and have your journal put in some cool museum for people all around the world to see.  After you die.  Duh.
• You want to record your thoughts, dreams, wonderments, wanderments, and joys, throughout the years to look back on later.
• You want to remember the small things, as well as the big.
• You want to come back later and see how your handwriting has evolved.
• You want to come back later and see how your thought process has evolved.
• You want to remember the good times, and the bad, and learn from them.
• You have any life problems, at all.
• You need to sort your thoughts.
• You discovered something amazing that will impact the rest of history.
• You're stressed about life.
• You want to talk to yourself, but you know it's more socially acceptable to journal.  (Who cares?  I do both!)  (They're basically the same anywho!)
• You want to talk to yourself, but you're in a situation where if any sound issues forth from your mouth, you instantly die.
• You need a productive way to procrastinate on school.
• You need a productive way to procrastinate on life.
• You're an introvert and people stress you out.
• You're an extrovert and people stress you out (does that happen?  I wouldn't know.)
•  You have a speaking disorder but love to talk.  A lot.  (AKA, you mumble and mix up words a lot so it's very hard to talk, and you find it easier to just write it all down.)  (AKA, me.)

I know there have got to be so many more reasons that YOU (and I) need to journal.  What are they?

P.S.  Should I do more posts on journal-y stuffs?  I like the idea...