I've been writing paper diaries on and off since I was a kid. I think I got my first diary when I was seven or eight; it was a five-year diary with a lock and only a tiny space to write in for each day. I remember writing quick sentences about swimming lessons and eight-year-old friendship dramas in there. Sadly, I don't think I have that diary any more; I suspect it got lost when I moved house.
After that, I forgot about it for a few years, until I was thirteen, when I decided to start writing a diary again. I scribbled all my adolescent angst down in cheap exercise books, and I kept it up for a good few years, until I was seventeen or eighteen, whereupon I discovered the internet and moved to OpenDiary.com.
It wasn't until a few years ago, when I was about 26 or so, that I started to write in paper journals again. I decided to give the Embodiment project a try, and found that there was something very different about writing things privately in a paper journal than about putting my thoughts and experiences online for the world to read. I've kept it up on and off (sometimes I'll forget about my journal for a few months) ever since, and it's something I really enjoy. I started doing art-type journalling a year or so back, though I'm not sure what I do entirely counts as art journalling - it's just splashing paint around and making things look a bit more colourful than plain text, most of the time, with the occasional bit of collage or bad drawing.
One thing I've noticed is that I'm much pickier now about choosing my journals, what they need to look like and feel like. I really like pretty notebooks with good-quality paper, and I vastly prefer unlined paper over lined. if a journal doesn't feel "right", I'll have more trouble actually keeping up with it and making entries in it. Back when I was younger, though, I never cared about things like that in the least; it was entirely about what I was writing, and how it looked was completely irrelevant.
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Date: 2010-05-05 11:46 am (UTC)I've been writing paper diaries on and off since I was a kid. I think I got my first diary when I was seven or eight; it was a five-year diary with a lock and only a tiny space to write in for each day. I remember writing quick sentences about swimming lessons and eight-year-old friendship dramas in there. Sadly, I don't think I have that diary any more; I suspect it got lost when I moved house.
After that, I forgot about it for a few years, until I was thirteen, when I decided to start writing a diary again. I scribbled all my adolescent angst down in cheap exercise books, and I kept it up for a good few years, until I was seventeen or eighteen, whereupon I discovered the internet and moved to OpenDiary.com.
It wasn't until a few years ago, when I was about 26 or so, that I started to write in paper journals again. I decided to give the Embodiment project a try, and found that there was something very different about writing things privately in a paper journal than about putting my thoughts and experiences online for the world to read. I've kept it up on and off (sometimes I'll forget about my journal for a few months) ever since, and it's something I really enjoy. I started doing art-type journalling a year or so back, though I'm not sure what I do entirely counts as art journalling - it's just splashing paint around and making things look a bit more colourful than plain text, most of the time, with the occasional bit of collage or bad drawing.
One thing I've noticed is that I'm much pickier now about choosing my journals, what they need to look like and feel like. I really like pretty notebooks with good-quality paper, and I vastly prefer unlined paper over lined. if a journal doesn't feel "right", I'll have more trouble actually keeping up with it and making entries in it. Back when I was younger, though, I never cared about things like that in the least; it was entirely about what I was writing, and how it looked was completely irrelevant.