Journaling in handwriting

I'm a fan of journaling which I've documented often in a few places. Asking introspective questions is a useful practice. Get your thoughts out of your head to see them, meet them as words, doodles, anything that comes out. You get to meet them and potentially have them make more sense to you and to others.

For a few years I've been journaling digitally using Day One. It's a solid enough choice. I don't often use my own hand writing to journal. I'll take visual notes on notecards or in Squid. Writing by hand to get a lot of thoughts out feels different.

It's a small experiment that I chose a notebook with Mario on the cover to do some handwritten journaling. Fancy notebooks would normally stop me from writing anything much less digging into a topic. But in October of last year I started writing in it by giving myself a prompt.

Journaling with a prompt to make it about something in particular.

The first page is where I wrote this title.

Practices,

and Creative Tools

to Keep Moving

Through Intentional

and Intuitive

Holistic, Systemic

Action, Observation

The prompt worked.

Each session I sat with the journal I'd either write a few page titles in response to the book's overall prompt or write a response to a given title.

After a few months I'd collected enough pages where it seemed to be becoming something. That's when it became a series transcriptions.

All 22 Transcriptions

• Act Without Thinking
• Think Yet Still Act
• Lost and Found Mental Models
• Build to Trust
• Concept to Concrete
• Mechanics and Rituals
• Imposing or Offering
• Willful Intention
• Instinctual Skill Applied
• Nourishing Wandering
• Demon's Final Boss
• Playful Challenges
• Warm Up
• Filling Blanks
• Collective Immediate Expression
• Make Sense of Things Gently
• Analytic Eye to Follow Signals
• Lists, Maps, Flows: Essence of Design Mindset and Expression
• Points of View
• Observable Phenomena
• Emotional Touchpoints
• Ready to Grow and Meet All Skills

Now We'll See

Would it be fun, useful, interesting, and wanted for this to become something else? This series could make an interesting mini-comic. Or a zine. Possibly a poster. Maybe a set of cards.

I'm leaning toward making it into a zine, poster, or cards. I'll see what you folks think and also sit with this in the pile of projects that are sometimes where my mind goes to play.

Another Series?

The journal isn't full. Also as I look back at the prompt I can think of other ideas to journal about. I don't plan to force another series but I'm open to it. Other projects are top of my list and schedule. But then isn't that when the interesting ideas want to show up like a cat that knows it can demand attention and sit in the middle of your workspace.