A Swap-bot project gave me more inspiration to write on this subject.
Journals ( aka Diaries ) for me is " talking to myself " via pen and paper. A paper conversation unto myself. After my body dies, then the journal turns from a personal narrative to a piece of history. In journal writing, I know in the back of my mind that after I pass over the veil that someone will read my journal. So with this thought I chose not to write anything negative and had not done so for a long time. This quote: "Thoughts Become Things.... choose the good ones" from Mike Dooley came to mind. Thoughts do become things. So I avoided negativity and wrote only of good or neutral things. But I am me, and like to keep things real. Goddess knows I have had a huge share of negativity in my life. A soul with a body and here, this side of the veil. Experiencing Karma good and bad so I will write of everything from now on.
“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.” ― Carl Sagan
A current Swap-bot journal project is: April 2017 Journal Swap. From the coordinator hosting the swap, we are to get some kind of journal like a composition book or other journal. Nothing too small. We the participants are to fill it out over a month. I can do whatever I want in it, just make sure it is filled with stories, journal entries, collages, art, recipes, whatever I want. The goal should be to fill a page or a couple of pages every day. Each entry should be something of substance.
This endeavor is a small pleasure for me as I am into writing and working with the trade of printing & publishing.
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My choice was to use a composition book and to embellish it. I added labels within the copy, and pasted in front and back endpapers and flyleafs. I found an antique bookplate and put that in. I also made a label from an antique graphic, pasting it on the front cover to hide the pre-printed product label description. The final addition was that I signed my work on the inside back cover and dated it.
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Addendum:
My history with journals go back 48 years to when I was the age of 10. That is when I was introduced to the trade of Printing & Publishing. I fell in love with the trade after going to see a print shop in my hometown. A few days after that visit I began to make small paper journals during classroom breaks at elementary school. I still have a journal I made during my first year of formal training in print shop operation. I was attending a vocational/technical school. That year was 1975.
Do you keep a journal ?