Journaling saved my life about twelve years ago. I got into the habit if emptying out my brain first thing in the morning. I knew that it was time to stop when I filled three pages of long hand stuff. Nothing about it resembled art but it made room—on my insides—for lots of art-y stuff. I lost that habit when I started commuting to seminary. Six hundred miles a week plus all the reading and paper writing consumed my time.

I bought some moleskines (small ones with the brown craft covers) several months ago and started doing little notes and things—just to get started again. Last week I bought the black ones with the grid paper. I like that graph style paper for note taking because in a crazy kind of way there’s already some organization on the page. I just fill in the blanks. Jep, it’s crazy.