I'm reading, playing around with and learning from such a good book, 'The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist You Truly Are'. The author, designer and artist Danny Gregory, is a great fan of keeping a journal - but only if you embellish it with pictures, keepsakes, drawings, and your own art, no matter how awful you think it is. Good news: from his POV, none of it is awful. Gregory reckons journals only work if you go at them with the right attitude. It's a bad idea to scribble away just as a way to complain about your life, he asserts (and he has experience, having done plenty of it himself before he saw the light). "Your journal shouldn't be a dumping ground but a space to create, recognise and celebrate beauty and joy, which is in all things. It should be a friend you have a great time with, not a shoulder you whine on. Commemorate the positive. Eliminate the negative." When I read those words I went to look at my own stack of old journals and realised how much whining I'd done over the years. Then I looked at ones I'd done in a more creative and positive state of mind. When I compare my moany pages with the ones I've put pictures in, I sure know which ones were the most fun to fill up. |