Do you have a plan for where your going in life? Can you remember the amazing things that have happened to get you where you are today? What about the challenges and what you did to overcome them? As the old saying goes, “you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been” and as Bilbo Baggins said ”It’s a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no telling where you might be swept off to.”

These messages can be interpreted a number of ways, but I believe the most relevant is that of tracking and recording, of capturing stories, dreams and emotions. The best medium I’ve found to do this is pen and paper – the humble journal.

What Journal Writing Is and Isn’t

Writing in a journal has this stigma attached to it of teenage girls using fluffy pink pens to draw love hearts and write about boys in their diaries. I’m sure this does happens, but this is only the more publicised side of it that you see in movies. Journal writing is much more than a diary, it is part of you. Part of who you are and who you want to be. I actually used to use journal in high-school. I used to write of my feelings and dreams. Much of this ended up being poetry. The poetry of an adolescent male, be what it may, is what helped to shape who I am today and instilled a love of the creative word in me that I’m sure will last forever. Anyway, I digress…

I want to start journaling again. In poetry, prose, pictures, whatever. To this end I have just bought my first Evernote Moleskine. I’m going to write something, anything, at least once a day. I want to take a journey deeper into who I am and who I want to be, and ultimately to discover how I’m going to get there. I want you to join me. I want you to embark on this journey into your own soul, into your dreams. I’ll be sharing my challenges with journal writing, my triumphs and maybe some daily hacks discovered during the process. There are many blogs that sing praises to keeping a journal, so there’s no doubt we’re doing the right thing, but often it’s hard to get started. It’s hard to know what to write in those first few days. Let’s figure it out together.

Here’s the Plan

The start date for this is March 1, 2013. This is gives you plenty of time to get the right gear and really all you need is a comfortable pen and a notebook. If you can, get yourself a nice pen and notebook. The better quality they are the more you’ll look after them and cherish using them. If you go into your local supermarket and grab a BIC and a 48 page exercise book you won’t be doing your writing any justice. I’ll be using my Evernote Moleskine. You can find amazing quality journals at Epica and other stationary shops. Moleskines are also a great product and are very widely available. Your pen should be close to you and say something about who you are. You may wish to try a fountain pen for example. I’ll be using a simple stainless steel pen that I carry everywhere with me and use for everything, I am very rarely without it.

Epica Journal

Ok, so you now have some time to go and get the right materials for this. If you’ve never kept a journal or diary before please don’t write off this exercise as waste of time. Please give it a try. Remember though, you only get out of it what you put in. The more of your soul that you lay out on the page, the better your experience will be.