How to Keep a Holiday Journal (words are optional!)

We spend lots of time focusing on our art and how to create income from it. In the middle of our art "work," it is essential to give space and room to our personal creativity.

Using our creative skills for to launch businesses and create unique ways of income is something I am and will always be passionate about.

However; I've learned the lesson of focusing so hard on an end goal that the personal, hidden self got neglected.  Relationships became overlooked.  As a result of not paying attention to these important parts of my life, everything suffered.

Keeping a journal helps to keep the creative candle lit.

Journaling is personal- not that it is necessarily private (I don't have deep, dark secrets in my journals!) but there is something that shifts in us- mentally, emotionally, and spiritually- when we do something to nurture our inner lives that is not public to other people.

Journaling cultivates our inner lives. It helps to imprint memories. Journaling helps us process what we go through. It helps us remember joyous celebrations.  Working out a problem or mourning a loss via a journal is very cathartic and can help focus emotions threatening to launch in places we don't want them to go!

And at the holidays, journaling can help solidify experiences and activities to cement them into our memory and help us dive deeper into the wonder of the season.

Would you consider starting a holiday journal?

For the next 30 days, record thoughts, impressions, joys, memories (good and bad), nostalgic moments, and the stresses of the season in a journal.

And guess what? If writing is more work than joy, you can do it with very few words at all.

Do you have you curious?  Let's go!  I've included some ideas to help you brainstorm your holiday journal. Through the month, I'll share my own entries and ideas.

1. Traditional journal

If you are like most people, you've got a blank journal lying somewhere around the house.  If not, the local arts and crafts store, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, and Target all carry journals, ranging from the basic to the beautiful.

The best way to stick to something is to do it at the same time every day. Make it a goal for the rest of the month to write something in the journal at the beginning or the end of each day.

If you are on the go, consider keeping the journal in the car.  When you are waiting to pick someone up or a have a few minutes in the parking lot, take the time to record in the journal.

BTW- Release the need to be proper or write in correct English.  Seriously.  It's your journal and no one is looking.  Or, if they are (and believe me, your holiday journal WILL be a blessing to loved ones who find it later in life) the proper English- or lack thereof- is not important.  What is important is the special touch that is YOU going into each and every entry.

2. Make lists of things you love or enjoy about the season.

Making a list may seem cliche but writing a list spurs the mind to think more creatively. Try it.  A list about what you love will start turning in to other thoughts, ideas, and journal entries.

3. Create a "thankful for" list.

There is nothing like true gratitude to melt an icy heart and warm a chilly soul.

4. Write about a Christmas memory from childhood and why it is so special.

5. Write about what you love about Christmas. Consider the senses of the season: tastes, smells, sounds, sights.....

6. Describe what you hate about the season. What would you like to drop altogether ?

7. Who do you love to be with at the holiday season?

Place pictures of them in the journal.  Use adjectives to describe them. Write a favorite memory.  Write why they are special to you.

8.If you created the perfect Christmas Day, who would be there? What food would you serve? What gifts would you give? What music would play?

9. Don't like to write? Use pictures. Take the same blank journal and put in pictures of what you are doing each day.  Yes, many of us don't print pictures anymore so there may need to be some brief set-up of the printer.

Once the printer is set up, utilize it this season   Print and paste.

10. Shoot pictures and create an online journal or collage- make it crazy, bling-y, simple, traditional. Cut out words from magazines to express feelings.

For example: Take a picture of the Christmas tree.  If it's not up yet, you can take a picture of:

• the space before the tree goes there
• the tree unadorned
• the tree decorated
• the tree with gifts
• the tree with kids or people communing around it
• the tree after Christmas

This can be done with any symbol you celebrate during this season.  Perhaps Advent is a focal part of the Season....or a big meal (pictures of the kitchen & dining room- before food prep, in the middle of preparations, the dinner table with no people, then with lots of people, empty plates & happy faces, the dishes....we don't need words but these pictures will bring back memories for years and years)

11. Christmas is symbolic as the season of hope.  Write about one thing you remain hope-filled for.

Many people feel down or depressed at Christmas.  Is it because they  have lost some hope for something or someone? If  you've lost a bit of hope in life, journal about that.  Don't push past tears or sadness if they come.  The sadness is there anyways. Stifling it will causes more problems down the road- not just emotionally, but physically.  Take care of that part of yourself.

12. Take close up pictures of moments in your day. Perhaps the kitchen is a mess after a full day of baking.  Maybe the kids tromped mud all over the floors. The tree is on top of the car. Or sticking out a window. The kitten got in the tree and knocked it down. The babies are sleeping in their Christmas pj's. It's a quiet night alone with you and your favorite book. Or slippers. Wrapping gifts. Smiling children. Friends having coffee. Beautiful Christmas kitchen ware.  The meal that took hours to make. The homemade wreath on the front door. Frost on the grass. Frost on the windows. The first snow of the season. Take the pictures and stick the memories in the journal. Write something or nothing but the date.

Take one picture to characterize the day for the month.

Enjoy the moments.

13. Cut out recipes or pictures out of magazines, newspapers, or ads that come your way.  Record them in your journal and write words (not sentences) on why they are meaningful to you. If feeling especially creative, make one new recipe from your journal this Christmas.

14. Sketch or paint something you are doing. Maybe you are sitting in Starbucks with a Christmas mystery novel.  Admiring the decorations on the mantle. Watching snow fall.  Feeling the heat of a fire.  Walking by homes covered with lights.  Noticing the kitten wrapped up in lights...or taking a nap by the tree.

15. Is there something you are journaling that would be even more special as a shared memory?  Consider taking a journal entry, making a copy of it (or take the original) and mail it to the other person.

16. Remember your favorite Christmas story as a child.

What did you love about it? What do you love now?  What do you remember from it and what feelings does it invoke?

In closing........

Use this time to use your creativity to play and sketch and paint and collage and scrapbook and photograph- just for you. Enjoy these moments.  Journaling helps us do another thing: pay attention. In a world where paying attention gets harder and harder to do, journaling the sounds, smells, sights, feelings, tastes and wonder of the season reinforces the beauty of the simple, the joy of the journey.

C`est Noel. This is Christmas. Grab a journal and saturate in the wonder and comfort.

Joy to you.

Melissa