Journals and Papers

It’s called, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), winter blues, or winter and seasonal depression. At this time of year (January) it can affect some people. Reader’s Digest suggests, “Feeling tired, irritable, or down in the dumps this time of year? It’s estimated that 15% of Canadians experience these symptoms of winter blues.” It comes from a lack of sunlight, less activity and the urge for most people to stay indoors and escape the cold, leading to less socializing.

There are many ways to combat the blues, and one choice might be to use a journal and do some writing. When depression hits, it can feel as if you are in a dark tunnel, with little light. You may hold feelings in and find it hard to express your thoughts to loved ones. By writing in a journal you are free to express thoughts, and if kept private, there is no repercussion.

If you are suffering from the winter blues, pick a time of day when you feel most relaxed. Every day pick a word or phrase (or simple thought) that has been going through your mind. You will be creating a word web, which will help you define your thoughts.

Open your journal and write a word or phrase in the middle of the page, then circle it. This can be the first word that comes to mind, or something you have been thinking of for awhile. From the circle, draw a line out from it in any direction and write a word or phrase which relates to the one you just wrote (whatever comes to mind). Then circle it. From this word, draw another line in any direction and write an additional word related to the one you just wrote, circle it and continue from that theme until you have no more word choices.

When you have exhausted your train of thought on that theme, go back to your original word in the center of the page and draw another line from it, selecting another feeling associated with the word. Continue on creating a web of words that reflect your current thoughts and feelings. Some of these extended words could also join to ones you have already circled if they are related. Take a look at your word web and if you see a theme, write a few paragraphs about what you have discovered.

Why would this help? By creating the wheel spontaneously with words and feelings that pop into your head, you can see a pattern or flow of where your thoughts and emotions are at the time of writing, and you may be able to change to happier feelings based on what you discover.

Here at Journals and Papers, we often wonder that if children were allowed to write outside the lines in school what kind of creative adults would every child become. Most people prefer a lined journal. We’ve heard comments that if they had a blank journal, their writing would be messy, all over the place, they can’t write straight. We wonder at this logic and the creativity that it squashes. We can be creative individuals if we aren’t constrained to boxed, lined, circular, or rectangular drawn out spaces, which suggest we write inside of and not to go outside of the lines already drawn for us.

Is it the intimidation of a blank page, staring at us, clean and pristine that somehow gives us a sacrilegious notion that we shouldn’t muck it up with plain old meanderings. There is a solution to that. Buy a blank journal, and on the first page, write a title page, such as, “This Journal Belongs To…”, or “Property of …”. And also add a date. Now that the first page tainted with ink, it should be easy to turn to the second page and place some form of graphic upon it. Is it still hard to write on the blank page staring at you? On the second page then, use a photograph, or cut-out a picture, quote or text from a favourite magazine. Place that on the second page. Then on the third facing page, turn the journal on an angle and add some text that goes from the bottom left corner (which if angled is on top now) across to the right corner. There are no lines to constrain your creative efforts on this blank-paged journal.

You can write across the page, down the page, corner to corner, around the outside edges, ending in the middle, or from the middle out, from bottom to top, top to bottom, or side to side. The creativity is limitless, and you would be surprised the type of thoughts that you could be unleashing by not staying to what we grew up with - staying within the lines, and writing neat and tidy-like.

This post is not intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but rather a light-hearted look at other ways to journal creatively within the pages of a blank journal.

Writer’s block is a nasty affliction, almost like bottled up tears that just won’t come. You know you have to cry, but are either too mad, or upset to let go and do it. The key here is blockage and trying to figure out why the words won’t come.

Free Fall Writing is one tool a journal writer can use who is experiencing writer’s block, which can come from wanting to censor or edit as we are writing. The inventor of the ‘Free Fall Method of Creative Writing’ was well-known Canadian author, W.O. Mitchell. To practice the free fall method of writing, writers must tune out that internal editor, which is nagging them with thoughts of what and how to write. Forget the editor, and write whatever thoughts come to mind. Be sure to take into account sensory information and memories. The trick is to keep writing, leave the editing and read-back until the end of the writing process.

To practice free fall writing, but not knowing where to start, try looking at pictures, or headlines. If you are on the internet look for a picture with similar subject matter that you are writing about. See if the picture triggers thoughts and just start writing what comes to mind. Don’t sensor yourself.

Free fall is a great idea and wonderful tool to use in most cases of writer’s block. But creativity can still be diminished by those thoughts and feelings that are dragging us down and upsetting us. In this case, it can be just as easy as putting down your journal and going for a walk, doing meditation, letting go, relaxing – simply leaving your writing for another day.

I’ve been noticing recently that retired seniors are coming up with activities they can do, which are meaningful, creative and a lot of fun. Some of these activities are off-chutes of others, such as scrap booking and taking journal writing to a new level.

I’ve met one lady who wanted to take photos of me at my home-based business office. We both live in a rural area, and “just for fun – and something to do”, she was taking pictures of local businesses, printing them, adding business cards and brochures, and notes about the business and compiling it all into a scrap book page. One thing to note here is that in the country, not all businesses of the norm. Some are quite different and encompass anything from ranching to knife carving to taxidermy. Once her project is finished, she’ll have a memory book full of interesting businesses and people she met along the way. (In the future, it can always be donated to the local library.)

Not knowing what to do with his time when my Father-in-Law retired, he decided to continue his computer work, but made a shift from business to personal writing. His days are always busy and sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all he does. So everyday at night or during the day he writes a few paragraphs about his activities and people he was with. He adds such things as ticket stubs, cards, receipts and photos. He’s not even six months into his daily journal and he has already filled up a 3 inch binder full of writing and collectibles from his activities. He loves doing this, as it is an activity that again lets him interact with others, not to mention his children love it too. Now we get to know what keeps him so busy!

I am sure there are many other ideas on how seniors are keeping journals. Please comment on them and share your ideas here on this blog.

Sometimes it is nice to be able to find journal entries that were written in the past, but if you haven’t created a way of finding specific entries, you will be searching through many pages for a long time. There is an easy method to catalogue journal entries into a table of contents (TOC) without too much effort.

1. When starting a new journal, leave anywhere from 2 to 3 pages at the beginning of your journal for a table of contents (TOC). (If you have a journal with more than a hundred pages, you may want to leave more pages open.)

2. Excluding the TOC pages, number the rest of your journal pages, at the top or bottom of each page. You can center the page numbers or put them in the corners. Be creative with this. Use a colored pen and write the numbers in calligraphy if you want to.

4. When creating a new journal entry; date it (left or right hand side) and give it a title (centered).

5. In your TOC, on the left hand side, write the page number of the entry you are working on, followed by the title and date (see example).

6. You can even take it a step further and add a one line description below your TOC entry, if you feel you’d like more of a reference about your journal entry.

7. If you have a journal with sections, and you write in your journal in different sections based on a particular subject, you can also split up your TOC into the sections pertaining to your journal topic area.

8. When you have finished filling up a journal (a rare event at my desk), you can place from and to dates on the front cover and spine (if applicable) and a general title (e.g. nature journal, or traveling Europe).

The unique thing about this way of cataloguing entries, is that you have a means of finding entries, and you also have a date reference. You’d be surprised how many years go by and how many journal volumes you can go through. It is cool to wade through old entries and see what types of subjects you were working on. If you are journaling for future generations, they too will have a point of reference for when the piece was written.