Summer 2012 Project: Keel’s Simple Diary

As my recent blog entries may have indicated, I am becoming more proactive and productive, setting aside time and energy for creative projects, music writing, zine-making, and self-care.  And about time too!  After years of defining and redefining my responsibilities, and worrying about my low productivity levels, I finally feel as if I’m moving in the right direction.

One negative consequence of this is that I have found myself struggling to regularly update my paper journal.  I’m an avid journal writer, and have been ever since secondary school.  I like being able to work through my thoughts on paper like that, and I love the way a completed journal looks, with its greyed edges and bulging pages.

(As an aside, I prefer to call my collected thoughts a “journal” rather than a “diary”, as a diary sounds as if I write every day about the mundane details of my life.  In fact, I only ever write when something significant happens in my life, e.g. making a new friend, or when I need to do some “brain admin”, e.g. working out how I feel about a particular issue.  A journal feels more open-ended than a diary.)

My lovely friend Hannah bought me Keel’s Simple Diary for my birthday last year, which I have been writing instead of my paper journal for the past few months.  Each page features a slot for the date, a short description of one’s day, a pithy aphorism written by Keel (I think these were supposed to be inspiring, but I found them to be kinda hokey), and some writing prompts and lateral-thinking questions.  I liked how structured each page was; it was a good way of getting me used to sitting down at my desk every night to write something.

Here are a few of my completed pages (some parts have been blurred out for privacy!):