Sunday Letter: One Notebook
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The more I journal, the more people in my life show up in its pages. This morning, Chris Brogan wrote about what happens when I tell them about it. I started writing in a journal years ago, but it wasn’t in one book. It was all over the place. My journal became so cluttered with to-do lists and work projects, I grew frustrated that I couldn’t keep my thoughts organized. During the pandemic, I tried something new. I gave myself permission to let all of my thinking show up in my pages, with only one rule. I had to keep everything in one notebook. Separating the parts of my life didn’t work for me, because it isn’t the way I live. I am a multidimensional person who blurs the lines between work and life. I always have, so why shouldn’t my journal reflect that? My pages include pieces of advice, ideas, quotes from books, reminders, insights, nature connection, and projects. As soon as I stopped fighting against my way of thinking on paper, it revealed things to me. The thinking practices I learned from others and brought into my journal connected us. Their living questions play in the background of my own. If I focused solely on my inner landscape in my journal, I would have missed the exchange between Chris and me, and his lesson would have remained hidden. Who do you invite into your pages, or as Chris asked, how do you use your journal? Be well, Kathy |
Kathy Donchak
I write about nature, family, creativity, and wellbeing.
Source One must work with the creative powers - for not to work with is to work against; in art as in spiritual life there is no neutral place.” ~ Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures Our garden is taking shape. Inspired by one of my favorite gardening books by Rebcca Cole, I am dreaming and choosing plants to create a small garden of evergreens and deciduous trees, espalier fruit trees, and flowers. My husband is working through plans for raised vegetable and herb beds to feed the body while I work to...
And here I build my platform, and live upon it, and think my thoughts and am high. To rise, I must have a field to rise from. To deepen, I must have a bedrock from which to descend. ~ Mary Oliver, Long Life I can hear the birds again. The rainy mornings have been flooded with sounds of so many frogs, you are sure you left a window open, but today, thanks to the early morning urging of our cat at the window, I began to hear them again. The geese honking overhead, woodland songbirds, even an...
Threshold You want a door you can be on both sides of at once. You want to be on both sides of here and there, now and then, together and—(what did we call the life we would wish back? The old life? The before?) alone. But any open space may be a threshold, an arch of entering and leaving. Crossing a field, wading through nothing but timothy grass, imagine yourself passing from and into. Passing through doorway after doorway after doorway. ~ Maggie Smith Walking our new neighborhood each...