Journaling: Day 14

The journaling has been going smoothly, I'm still maintaining a good habit of writing when I feel the need to express events in life. I'm starting to get annoyed however with having to write update posts about the journaling. Its starting to seem a little redundant from my perspective and is getting really tough to post new updates with only a day of change. Possibly this is making me much more aware of subtle changes, but as of right now it is just a bother.

On another note, due to new events in my life I may be retiring this site in favor of a new website I'm creating. That I'l keep under wraps until I complete it. Until then stay tuned and I'll update you on the status.

Bert

Journaling: Day 13

I seem to be getting more comfortable with journaling now. I'm using it consistently to process overwhelming thoughts and emotions that occur during the course of my day. Its becoming almost an automatic response. I feel negative or confused and I react by opening the journal and writing out what I feel. Just by this action alone, I already feel calmer and more aware of my current state.

I'm definitely glad to see this trend occurring since I've been wanting to develop this habit. It will give me a useful tool in growing in my life. How much time in our lives do we waste holding clouded thoughts and mixed feelings? Journaling is a tool to clear the cobwebs to allow our true intentions to shine forth.

This works in conjuction with using the journal for To Do lists also. By writing tasks I need to get done in one place, I can get immediate progress completed on actions that need attention in my life. This way the journal is helping to improve multiple aspects of my life. Not only my emotional/mental state, but also my physical enviroment.

On a smaller note, I've noticed personally using bulleted lists with a little context before hand is the most effective for me so far. At a glance I'm able to capture the essence of the entry and see the main takeaways. This makes reviewing the past entries a breeze and opens up an opportunity to do a week-end review, to guage progress.

Bert

Journaling: Day 12

Today's journaling experience was much more effective and useful than its been for the past few days. I used the journal continuously throughout the day to record thoughts that I wanted to organize and clear my head of negative feelings I was experiencing. Again I noticed its very effective when used as a tool to process experiences and feelings. The act of writing them out forces me to consciously face whatever it is that I'm writing about. Thus I become aware of things I would normally suppress within myself.

The tool I'm using to journal (Google Notebook) has worked so far, but I feel there could be something better to work with. I'm thinking of a combination of using a portable notebook for handling immediate thoughts and issues along with some specific journaling software, so I can get the organization and flexibility I'm looking for. Potentially if there is software where I can access it on the internet, even better.

On another note, I'm learning from the act of blogging about this challenge, that writing for multiple days about a challenge can be difficult. In the act of trying something new, the first week will yield a lot of immediate results due to the newness of the situation. However upon getting more comfortable with it, the visible results start diminishing and make it hard to write full posts. This will definitely be an exercise in becoming more aware of subtle changes and lessons learned.

Bert