KEEPING TRACK

My journals and tracking tools, an uplifting pandemic drama, the Finnish band I'm now obsessed with, a poem on transformation, and a dispatch from "Ron's World"...

Hi, Friends:

Last week I shared my simple approach to morning practice. This week, I am sharing journaling practices.

While I do admire the creativity of other people’s bullet journals, the thought of hours of advance work and preparation just to set up a journal, well, it makes me tired before I even begin. My journals are all about ease, fun, anti-perfectionism, and the consistency of just showing up to the page. Sounds a lot like playfulness, eh?

You’ll find below some of the journal processes and tools I am using in 2022. Some I have used for years and others are brand new this year. Actually, that’s a pretty good description of how I approach things in general. I like to keep what remains life-giving in the old, and stay open to the magic of the new.

Daily Journaling and Tracking Tools:

I do not collect a lot of “things”anymore, but I do collect my activities and experiences in my journals. It anchors me and helps me stay more awake to my life as I am living it. An unexamined life, and all that…

(I’ve shared some links for you in an effort to make it easy for you to see what I use. I DO NOT receive a percentage on sales from Amazon. This was just the easiest way to show you. )

• New to me this year: I track my daily activities in a mini-logbook. Quick notes on how I spend my time. The term logbook originated with a ship's log—a maritime record of important events in the operation, management and navigation of a ship. For me, it’s a way to support my often unreliable memory. “Where were you at 5 pm on Dec 5, 2021?” One moment, please. Grabs logbook. Flips pages. HERE. Ron and I always joke that if we were put on the stand in a courtroom we wouldn’t possibly be able to remember where we were and what we were doing a week ago. Now I can. Takes seconds.

• Inexpensive Spiral Notebook: This holds my Morning Pages and Writing Practice. Daily morning pages via Julia Cameron and dedicated writing practice via Natalie Goldberg. Nat G. suggests filling a spiral notebook with writing every month. I follow her lead and buy cheap, playfully-designed 100-page spiral notebooks and fill one a month with morning pages and writing practice. This is the private space where stuff gets worked out.

• Daily Diary - This is where I track my gratitude + journal something that was important to me from the day and make my gratitude lists. I may also doodle, draw, collage, and or explore questions on paper. It’s a working journal-diary not a pristine keepsake, though it’s precious to me. It’s full of meanderings, mistakes and also buried treasure. I often share from this journal.

• Love quotes? Me too. This year I started copying a quote daily into my 5 -year quote diary. Check in with me in five? So far, I’m enjoying this process. I sometimes forget and have to go back and add a quote and that’s fine with me. Tip o’ the hat to Austin Kleon for the idea.

I hope you found something helpful here. These journaling practices grew over time. They’re easy and enjoyable which supports daily consistency. Journaling not only increases my daily creativity and self-reflection, it provides a record of sorts, of my life experiences, insights, questions, and themes as they arise. It’s an evolving guidebook from me, to me. It’s also one of the ways I commune with Spirit. Over time, it becomes a treasure trove. I’d love to hear about your journaling practices or if any of these options inspire you to begin!

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3 Things Worth Sharing:

1. An uplifting pandemic drama? Yes. Station Eleven pulled off the impossible.

2. I discovered Husky Rescue, a Finnish electronic music band from Helsinki, Be prepared to be obsessed. Balm for winter months.

   As band creator Marco Nyberg puts it:

   "Every track is designed to be a warm breeze to counter the chill of daily life, whether you live in cold climes or not. All moments from life become part of the music. Husky Rescue reflects our background in Helsinki where the winter nights are so cold and long while the summer is hot and short, but oh so sweet. It's melancholic music but there is always hope. Husky Rescue's music is like the first snow on the ground when you can still see the green grass through the snow. It's like spring's sunbeam after the long, dark, sunless winter time."[3]

3. A gorgeous poem by my friend, Rachel Barham,

   While my eyes were closed,                                                          
   praying in the dark for an alchemy of soul
   for myself and those I love -
   that everything we are
   may be tenderly received
   and transformed in Love's blue flame - the dawn has suddenly come outside my window.
   My eyes widen to see
   the river silver now.
   Is this not the greatest and most overlooked alchemy, that night turns always into day, and day once again to night?
   That the river is forever becoming full and then empty and then full again, simply by saying yes to the moon?
   Can change be this natural?
   Open riverbed,
   open heart,
   open eyes.
   Transformation is the way of things.

Dispatch from Ron’s World:

When Ron misunderstands what I just said.

I said, “ I don’t want to feel like I am working.”

Ron: “You don’t want a slug of morphine?”

Pausing to take that in…

Me: “Right, that’s exactly what I said. “

Have a great week! And happy Twos-day 2/22/22 !

xoxo Mary