The importance of reviewing journals at the end of the year
Sorting through journals… sorting sorting…
Well that was an experience.
I just completed sorting through my journals for the year. I found this sweet spot in November to be a perfect time to sort through my journals... between the end of garden season and before Christmas season. Solid score.
Why it's a good idea to review your journals each year:
Short answer: Grab the gems and good ideas before they are forgotten or stale.
Long answer:
Put the year behind you (sayonara bad bits!)
Gain insights and learn lessons to plan better for the next year
Celebrate the wins
It's a bit of a bugger to read a journal from last January to revisit the big hopefuls just to realize you didn't do most of it. Conversely, it's nice to look at what you DID do and pat yourself on the back.Here's a few highlights (and low lights) from my year to give you an idea of how to approach sort through your journals:
DID retrain my brain with certain mind madness.
I decided to actively change my mood when mulling over stressful topics.
Money angst to exhilaration
Mess stress to peace
Body image to appreciation
Whenever I would catch myself stewing about money, messes, or my body, I would actively try to feel other feelings. It kind of worked! As long as I could catch it before it turned into belaboured brooding.
DID NOT end up being a YouTube superstar.
Not that I tried at first. I just wrote a heck of a lot ideas only to have them go stale on the page. That's alright. That's what our journals are for. Tossing out all the ideas, then picking up the one that sticks out and running with it. Then when I tried to make videos... ugh! It's like learning another language. Harder than I thought. Boy oh boy I have learned what I am bad at. By the time I learn how to make a decent video, pre-teens everywhere will surpass me in the algorithm.
DID NOT end up blogging as much as I wanted. As usual.
I learned that I have one decent story a week. Those stories went out in the form of Typewriter Letters. (UPDATE: The Typewriter Letter series is done now... not enough lovers of typewritten letters. Oh well. Still my favourite mistake.) My core group of letter lovers got the best of the literary gems this year.
Turns out, people really don't care about typewriters.
Nuts. I love them. (I have a delightful dozen. Most of them even work!)
DID discover people still love the Paris Letters.
My best seller in my Etsy shop by far was the 12 month subscription to the best selling Paris Letters that came out over the last decade. Turns out I still love sending them out, which was a nice surprise. I love setting them all out in a row, admiring them, then popping them in the envelopes. "Bye guys... have fun out there."
DID publish a book: Spiritual Retreat from Home.
I made it because I wanted it. It's funny to look back at the year to see those ideas become things. Like I'm sitting in the future right now and observing when the first nugget of an idea landed on the page.
All due to diligent journal writing.
DID NOT add any new online courses.
But holy mackerel did I write a lot of ideas. Almost too many. I had a course for memoir writing. Another for selling your art online. Yet another on achieving your goals... in an ironic twist as I did NOT achieve my goal of creating the course. HA!
After I reviewed the journals, I tossed the lot of them.
*****record scratch*****
Yes, pulled out the half baked ideas to see if I can turn them into things, but chucked the rest, saving myself future time. All the good ideas are now on index cards awaiting reshuffling and implementation.
It's a nice way to ponder the next year.
Because of my surgery and all the scars, I considered making next year The Year of The Lounge Pant.
Still thinking about it.
Some nerve endings are waking up and they are FRAZZLED.
However, I think I'll just plug away at the crop of ideas I wrote down and keep journaling to see what other thoughts become things. We will see how it goes.
What about you? What do you think about sorting through your journals?
