Been thinking about this alot lately. Personal journaling is, for me, a very organic process and teaching classes, posting on my blog and writing a book on this topic makes it sometimes difficult to separate out my journaling from the rest.
It's sometimes hard to be real with myself.
Peeps show around their art journals in a way that they'd never show their diaries or written journals.
Yes, it is great fun to view a journaler's pages, to take a peek at what they were thinking and how they pushed the materials, drawings, words. I'm always inspired by other journalers. But. (you knew there was gonna be a "but", right?)
Here I am, me and my journal and suddenly - is that pressure I feel? What if someone looks and sees that crappy drawing, that mess I made, that handwriting that really wasn't the "company" messy handwriting that I've cultivated?
Yeah, we are supposed to be above all that competition when we journal. I confess to finding it difficult to escape. I'm trying to get back to simply journaling for the gentle pleasure of the act. (I love that the word Journal is a noun and a verb.)
In the meantime, in the spirit of going with the moment, last Friday my pal Susan and I trekked up to the New Hope/Lamberton (PA/NJ) area. Above is a picture of a yellow window display. Yellow is such a shout of a color, isn't it? This window was brilliant.
1 comment:
I know exactly what you mean. The eye candy journals put such pressure on those of us who just get it down. Still, the loudest call is to be as authentic as possible, that is what we are called to do as real journalists. Sometimes authenticity looks like crap. Oh well! We show up. You do such wonderful things seesta.
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