Recent Journal Entry
To give you an idea of what I write in my journal, here is an excerpt from last weekend's journal entry.
I'm listening to Celtic music as I journal. It's early Saturday and all the windows are open and there is rain in the air. The point of journaling for me is to find peace. Not necessarily to examine my life or arrive at some great stream-of-consciousness insight - though there are times when those things happen. I have Welsh and Irish and Scottish in my family tree and this music touches me in a place other music does not. So it may be that it's time to chase beauty and peace instead of knowledge and skill. At least some of the time, anyway. And it says something, I think, that when I listen to this music and write from that quiet place inside, I tear up. Every time. Last night, shadows moved in my room and sleep eluded me. But this morning, here I am on the page.
It's not great writing. But it is the kind of writing I could only do with pen and paper because, for me, typing out my inner thoughts just isn't the same. We are more likely to read as we type. Which makes us more likely to edit or censor.
That doesn't happen with typing fiction necessarily, but it does happen, for me anyway, with nonfiction.
Fast, sloppy stream of consciousness writing makes it possible for me to reach a place I don't get to with other writing. Sometimes, this place is peaceful. Other times, it is sad. But I almost always feel better after I've been there.
To me, the music is key and Celtic music moves me like no other.
One of the songs I listened to (a Celtic version of St. Hildegard Von Bingen's O Frondens Virga (Oh, Flowering Stem) by NóirÃn Nà Riain:
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