I don't keep a journal

In the fall of 2008, I was visiting a local art museum with an out of town friend and stumbled upon an exhibit of artist's journals. I'd never seen anything like it and I was riveted. They filled me with yearning and made me physically ache. I'm not sure I even thought in terms of wanting to do something like that myself because it seemed so far out of reach. I wasn't an artist. That Christmas I gave my friend a copy of 1,000 artist journal pages - mostly so that I could look at it before mailing it off to her!

(I've since purchased my own copy.  It's amazing)

Three years later, I make a lot of art, but don't really think of myself as an art journaler because...

I don't keep a journal.  

But I do have THIS book.

It's a cheap weekly planner, kept during the most stressful 3 months of my professional career.

It holds 30 flimsy pages of collage, some drawing, and a few words each day - it's an amazing snapshot of what I was doing, reading, watching, eating and feeling in 2009.  

But I don't keep a journal.

In August of 2009 I got a new job, and life was easier and happier and I stopped writing stuff on that calendar. But in Spring and Summer of 2010 I kept something of an almanac in this little spiral bound notebook. I spent a lot of time working in the yard that summer and I joined a farm share for the first time. I documented everything I planted, and when everything bloomed, and what I got in my weekly share. There were some personal notes thrown in as well, and looking back on it gives me such vivid memories of that time.  

But I don't keep a journal.

Fall came, gardens died, and back-to-school-time got busy. The notebook was forgotten.

But clearly the pull of those artist's sketchbooks hadn't lessened. I bought a flimsy blank journal in April of 2010 and started painting and collaging snapshots of my daily life again. This one coincides with setting up my art room, launching my blog, and getting into a daily art practice. It has almost 50 entries.  

But I don't keep a journal.

Not coincidentally, that book came to an abrupt halt around the time I was doing the Index-Card-A-Day project (June - August, 2011).  

Come September, I remembered my weekly planner from 2009 and bought another. This one is still going strong with daily entries 5 months later.  

But I don't keep a journal.

And then in January, I started watching Natasha and Amy's altered book videos on flutterbye, and made my own altered book for documenting my life.  It started out with daily entries, but that only lasted a week, since I was already keeping daily entries in my calendar.  I'm using it regularly though - sometimes to capture the mood of a week, sometimes to reflect on a single event.  Sometimes I write loads of words, sometimes the images speak for themselves.  If you look closely, you might even call it an art journal.

But....

oh nevermind.