As people who publish our writing and art on digital platforms it can be easy to forget the important step of writing just for oneself.
When I was in my early 20's I didn't have a smart phone and barely participated in social media. As a result my journals were also full of emotional rants, collage-d art, and drawings. My life was far from ideal, but, I do appreciate those journals and the snapshot of that experimental version of myself.
About six months ago I started to document the changes of the seasons in my journal. It is just as simple as creating a title spread for each month, writing out the name of the month, and gluing some of my favorite finds characteristic of the season.
In the future I wish to have loads of curated notebooks and personal journals to look back on each phase of my life. So I set to work creating a book that reflects where I am now; living a simple life in our rural cottage and the surrounding forest.
The journal starts in October when I took a trip home to North America. Just before leaving for my trip I found three four-leafed clovers in the pond by our cottage and took them along as good luck charms. From my mom's garden I collected oak leaves and other tokens of fall.
Back in South America the season of the herbal harvest's had begun. November is a very abundant time and I documented here the harvest of Ginkgo, flowering tips of Linden, and a sprig of Jasmin flowers. With the brightness of spring I also felt the presence of ephemeral beings all around and added these faded images of fairies as well as an image of the mythical Melusine.
January, though bright and sunny was also very dry. The summer rains came a bit late this year and this section of my journal reflects that the only flowers in abundance were the daisies.
Then the rainy season arrived! All the flowers I had planted months back began to bloom and take over the garden. Cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers grew past the crops and have been a beacon for all the local butterflies. Never before had I dedicated so much space to just growing flowers. I am glad I did as this may very well be my last summer gardening here.
Now that it is March the weather is still very hot and there are plenty of flowers though the first signs of autumn are making an appearance. This transitional time is my favorite of the year and I am excited to document this and the seasons to come as they will be my last in this particular plot. All the more reason to make a splendid display of the blossoms and leaves of the months to come.
An awesome idea to not just document on the blockchain but also offline, on paper, like in the 'good-ole-days' ;<) I was without a smartphone until my early 30s ( I think I am a decade older than you, I was born in '81 ) but phones and the Internet already started taking over slowly but steadily. starting around the year 2000 ( when I entered University ).
I really like what you're doing but feel that I am too disorganized for that. I have so many different notebooks and they are in a bunch of different places. I often end up tearing pages out of them and even using pages for, for instance, shopping lists. They don't feel worth keeping over the years but I have kept some ( of my old writing ).
Overall I am glad to have become an adult in the digital age but also so glad that I got a chance to see the world before the 2000s and a bit of what the "good-ole-days" pre-internet were like. Now that I am able to make a living being a content creator I can't complain!!
I love that you have different notebooks and write things down even to this day. Maybe you can collect your favorite pages from all the books and make one scrapbook to summarize the year.
those are some great initiatives there. wish u best of luck
thanks so much! best of luck to you as well.
👍