I have varying success with keeping a journal. The main issue is that I am terrible at keeping a bedtime routine so I end up waaaaaaaaay too tired to actually write an end-of-day recount of what happened. I’m pretty decent at morning pages that I use sort of in a journal way – at least in a working ideas and feelings out kind of way.

Today, I tried a whole new kind of journalling – art journalling. And I REALLY like it. It wouldn’t be a

daily record kind of journal, obviously, but I like the idea of it for working out specific problems or for figuring out a visual response to something important or to inspire myself. 🙂

I signed up for the class on a whim weeks ago and I was very nervous about it – my automatic response to anything new is to be extremely nervous, I’ve been at that response so long that I just accept it as a part of the process and move through it. I am even starting to know the difference between nervous because something’s wrong for me and nervous because it’s new. I hope that that gets even more refined with time and I will gradually frop the nervousness at all. I’m not counting on it, but I live in hope!

Anyway, my nervousness dropped considerably when I discovered my friend Deb was doing the class too. Deb is one of those people who makes me more – more myself, more able to step up, more into whatever it is I am doing. She’s a good influence that way. (Note to Deb: You’re a bad influence in several other ways, my partner-in-crime, so don’t worry – you aren’t losing your touch!)

Anyway, when we went into the class, I was extra glad to have Deb there because I realized that my out-going but actually an introvert self would have had to make sure that everyone else in the class was doing okay – so I would have flicked my switch to ‘ON’ and the energy to do that would have sapped all my energy to actually get into the activity.
Anyway, when we went into the class, I was extra glad to have Deb there because I realized that my out-going but actually an introvert self would have had to make sure that everyone else in the class was doing okay – so I would have flicked my switch to ‘ON’ and the energy to do that would have sapped all my energy to actually get into the activity.

Anyway, I was nervous as hell because even though the teacher explained things clearly, there were no rules, no structure for how to get into the actual project. There was just the blank journal and then a bunch of art materials. I felt kind of excited, even though I was terrified.

Now I am not so much one of those people who has to get things RIGHT, but damn it, I hate to get things WRONG. I didn’t want to do this wrong, I didn’t want to try to go too deep or worse, I didn’t want to try and stay too shallow. It felt like a bit of a minefield.*

I figured out something to work on though, something I am conflicted on for my work, and I gradually got started, I picked something familiar for my cover – a kind of variation on a Zentangle. And then I decided to do one side of the journal in black and white – because I keep seeking certainty about uncertain things and what’s more certain than having things in black and white?

The other side was going to be in colour as I worked through different ways to solve the problem. The beauty of the colour side was that I realized that it doesn’t matter how I try to solve the problem, any answer will move me forward. That was a comfort.

I was really pleased with how the black and white side came out but I ran out of time to do the side with colour. I took the project with me, obviously, but I was afraid I wouldn’t get to it again.

I did though. I came home and decided that I was going to do a little more work on it, I drew for three hours. That’s more than a little more work but I am damn happy with it.

I saw a fun image from Fit Bottomed Girls a while back about how the main thing that holds you back from new things is not what you think you are, but what you think you’re not.

I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking of myself as ‘not a very visual person’ and as someone who can’t really draw. It turns out though that I just wasn’t visual in the ways I was expecting to be and I mostly haven’t thought of the ways that I could be drawing,

I feel pretty excited about the possibilities that my little project today have uncovered. I am still not going to be a visual artist – I don’t have the training nor the inclination, but I may be a draw-er. 😉

 

 

*Yes, I know how silly it is to overthink these things. I can only stop overthinking once I realize I am doing it!