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| "Inkwell," Charles Caseau, c. 1937. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program |
Hello friends,
Ever since childhood I have always been both obsessed with and terrified by journals. That's right, those beautiful little books filled with blank pages and endless potential. Scary.
I developed the bad habit of impulse buying them on sight, falling in love with more of them than I could ever fill. And then when I had them home I couldn't bring myself to write in them. The pages were so pristine. I couldn't sully them. The minute I stained them with ink they'd be ruined. So I amassed this big, guilty collection of completely blank, untouched journals.
I've dealt with this problem as an adult not by confronting whatever bizarre psychological thing is going on in my head but by simply not allowing myself to buy journals. I write in cheap, spiral bound notebooks from the drug store or on legal pads. It doesn't mean that I don't still want to buy every beautiful blank bound book I see. I just avoid them. And I've been happy like that.
Or at least I was until a big, fancy, shiny new store selling nothing but journals, cards, writing utensils and journal accessories opened half a block from my office. Just shoot me right now.
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| OOAK and handmade |
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| For journal customization |
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| Bat Mitzvah gifts for days... |
Of course I went in. I went in twice in one week. It's the most wonderful and most terrifying place all at once. The good news is that they specialize in journals so magnificent that the prices on most of the pieces I covet thwart the urge to impulse buy.
Most.
Voila, my first new journal in many, many years:
I'm in love. That old school type and soft fabric over the binding. The vintage-y kitsch of those unfinished edges. The appeal to my francophilia - or maybe it's just that the previous night I'd attended a lecture on Toulouse-Lautrec. The texture and thickness of it. But wait, there's more:
Is that three different kinds of paper you ask?
Is that a place to date the lined pages?
Wait - are those blank pages curiously perforated straight down the middle?
So here is the big question: What do I do with this thing? Dated, lined paper I get. Graph paper? Perforated blank pages? This thing was designed for something and someone in mind but what and whom I do not know. Probably not me.
For only $15, I should just treat it like a regular old notebook and use it to draw, scribble, sketch, list, draft and....I guess graph? whatever I want. Yet to me this thing is sacred and daunting, a thing of awe.
I want to - and by "want to" I don't mean "want to" so much as "have a neurotic impulse to" - turn this into a single, cohesive project, with a consistent theme and purpose throughout. I want it to be an art book, a coffee table book to add to my collection, a museum piece.
But I think that it's that kind of unrealistic goal setting that makes it difficult for me to "sully" my journals with, you know, my words and thoughts. Somehow just sitting down to write whatever I feel like seems disrespectful and a waste of good paper. I'd want to write down five drafts elsewhere before writing it in, but that's absurdly out of whack with the purpose of the thing: The journal is where you're supposed to work out your drafts.
Maybe a travel journal, or a scrapbook of a certain aspect of my life. But when I set forward on these projects I find my inclusions sparse. All my travel journals from past trips have 20 pages filled and 100 pages left blank, and it seems so wasteful. Of course, maybe one day it could occur to me to keep a single travel journal and include all my trips together...
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| "At the Writing Table," American 18th Century, c. 1790. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program |
This rule making impulse has been my problem with past blogs, too. I was too rigid about what I allowed myself to write and it stopped being fun and after a few posts I stopped coming up with ideas. Sometimes, Emily, you just don't have the time or the will to sit down every week and watch an episode of Star Trek and then write up a long, detailed, thorough analysis of its themes. Or to create a photo collage of beautiful yarns and knitting projects that all fit the same theme or color palette every single post. Or design a totally new craft project with detailed step-by-step instructions.
That's a mistake I have opted not to repeat here; I have purposely allowed myself flexibility to write loosely around a very general theme for this blog and so far I'm not finding it hard to produce content (whether it's good content...I guess you're the judge of that).
My sense is that I need the same attitude toward my written journals. In the past I tried a wine journal. That lasted 3 entries. I tried a reading journal - when exactly do I have time to read? I tried diagramming and journaling the various tarot readings I've given myself. Ha! Then you have to go reread them and see how wrong you were.
I have been maintaining my perfume-making journal, mainly because it's where I write down my brainstormed fragrance concepts and scribble out my recipes and their modifications. What is it, I wonder, that makes me keep the perfume journal? Necessity, I think? Perhaps the fact that I view it as documenting an artistic process, which is a thing of value and beauty unto itself. I may have been inspired by J.K. Rowling's keeping of a journal for all her ideas during the writing of Harry Potter. Don't judge.
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| "The Artist's Wife with a Book," Georg Friedrich Schmidt, 1752 Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art Open Access Program |
So back to my current conundrum. What do I do with mon carnet de poche?
I Googled around for other bloggers' take on this and didn't find anything that spurred great bursts of inspiration. A lot of the suggestions were basically just more rules: dream journal, goal journal, this journal, that journal...written-in journal as a gift for another person - that wasn't a half bad idea. But that seems more like a loophole to get around my fear of journaling rather than taking the problem on directly.
So I think, then, I'm going to apply the lessons I've learned from my own blogging experience, and rather than set strict rules for myself just give myself some overall guidelines:
1. Any subject matter is just fine
2. This journal is a gift to your future self
3. Therefore, everything it includes should be a source of future inspiration
4. Be creative
I think - and the format and different page styles of this journal really do make it the perfect book for this - the goal here will be to simply capture moments. Short ideas, little bits of inspiration. It is going to be my inspiration journal. Maybe a journal for inspiring future journals. A meta-journal.
Above all, it should be beautiful. Not beautiful in a purely vapid sense but from the perspective of aesthetics themselves carrying value and meaning. Its beauty should speak, give the reader pause. It's for me, but as much for anyone else who might pick it up should they discover it sitting out on my table. Personal, but exhibitionist. A work of art unto itself in that it chronicles the process of creativity, but more than that a collection of tiny prototypes.
This, my friends, is going to be the year that I'm not freaked out by blank paper.
What about you? Do you have a similar experience with journals, or are you a voracious journal user? Do you have any peculiar preferences when it comes to journals - does the size, the shape, the number of lines, the color of the paper have to be just right? What do you write about? Do you keep separate journals for separate things or does it all get thrown into a giant mishmosh? What function does your journal play in your daily life? Is it more functional, or more therapeutic? Discuss in the comments.
Emily
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