Journaling and The Morning Pages

I’ve been journaling consistently (pretty much daily) over the last 5 or 6 years. Alongside prayer/meditation and reading, I think it must be one of the most valuable daily habits.

Often it’s a diary, but not just that. Often it’s prayers. Or thoughts. Sometimes it’s images alongside the words. I generally don’t find it easy to know or understand my emotions or reactions to circumstances, unless I start putting them into words. And it’s easier to find words when only God is listening.

I use the Journey app on iPad. Pen and paper and printed photos, scrapbook style, would be great but I know I wouldn’t keep the same consistency with that approach. I like the easy reference to previous entries too that a digital journal provides.

Julia Cameron, in ‘The Artist’s Way’, recommends writing 3 pages early in the morning every day. Of anything. Not necessarily a journal. Write nonsense if you like. Throw it all straight in the trash if you like. Her take on it initially seems strange and non-productive and time-consuming but I get the aims that she describes:

• Get distractions out on paper now rather than stuck in your brain when you’re trying to think of other things.

• Get past your inner critic. Start the day by writing without feedback or critique or editing. Unfilter yourself for the day. Get passionate and real and angry and upset. Curse and ‘shout’ if you like.

• Know that you can write and create something, regardless of how you’re feeling.

I typically write later in the day but it’s an interesting challenge to try and I’m experimenting with it at the moment.

I think we often give up on journaling after a few days because we make it into just a diary of what we’re doing. And that can get boring. So skip the boring bits. No rules, write whatever we feel like writing, and maybe that will help us not feel so constrained through the rest of the day.