Shadowing Practice: I kept a journal for 42 years and this is what happened - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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If you ever wanted to start,

or maybe you started and stopped keeping a written journal,

this video is for you.

Hi everybody.

Welcome back to my channel.

Today we're going to do something a little different.

I am going to talk today about keeping a written journal.

I have had

written journals since about 1985

and before me my grandmother kept a journal almost every day of her life

and I'll talk a little bit about that

and my mother kept a journal for many many many years

and I have all of them right here

and I just want to talk about the gift of having a written journal

and what it has done for me in my life.

At the end, I have a story that I think some of you might relate to,

and it'll make it worthwhile.

So stick with me and take a little break from the endless news cycle

and from the endless scroll and all of the crazy,

and just have a minute to think about the benefits of having a written journal.

Today I want to talk about a habit that has shaped so much of who I am.

That is the habit of keeping a journal.

It is my most consistent habit.

It preceded my career, my family, my art.

And I really do credit it with helping me through so many times in my life,

whether it's big decisions or hard times,

breakups, or anything that life has had to throw at me.

I've been able to kind of look inward and to spend some time processing through these notebooks.

And I think it has done incredible things for me.

It brings me back to the page.

It keeps me calm.

It gives me clarity.

And I believe it gives me resilience.

So I know people get intimidated by the idea of keeping a journal.

There's so many people out there talking about bullet journals or morning pages or do this, not that.

buy a fancy Hobonichi, buy a Louise Carbon.

You don't have to do all that.

And actually, it's really nice after going

so deep on art supplies to just sometimes just have a notebook and a pen and take it with you.

It's just so great.

My second point about this habit is that memory keeping brings with it a kind of a magic.

And I do see that in my art journals as well.

But writing also has this way of transforming the ordinary to the extraordinary.

And I think that this is really profoundly meaningful.

Like when I look back in some of my books,

I'm always surprised to find how I was thinking about a particular moment in time.

Sometimes I just disregard things that I think would be really huge.

And sometimes small little details take on outsized importance.

And it is helpful to put things in context.

When you are keeping a log of your life,

sometimes it really helps to put things in that perspective.

There is satisfaction with finishing a book.

It just is.

It feels grounding.

It feels like you've earned something and it is its own reward.

It is its own reward.

The most substantial counterweight there is to the relentless never-ending scroll of our digital lives.

It gives us an excuse to unplug,

to start a new chapter,

to reframe, and to begin again.

And actually, today I'm done with this particular book,

and after this video, I will be breaking in my new journal,

and I'm really excited about it.

Okay, number four.

This is actually my favorite,

and I have a quote for it.

I have a quote that I'm going to read to you all.

It is from Susan Orlean.

It is from her new book.

And in fact, it's from like the first few pages.

So I do recommend that you check it out.

She's an incredible writer.

This latest book that she wrote, it is her memoir.

So after writing about other people for years and years and years,

she has turned her area of focus on herself.

And I will read now what she has said.

The process of a journey,

of striving for something that offers a sense of belonging and contentment of traversing the wild,

mystery of the unknown, is what it means to be alive.

Writing is a recapitulation of that experience.

Writing documents the process of traveling from birth to death,

from innocence to wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge,

from where we start to where we end.

Even writing

that doesn't seem to be about a journey is at its

heart a narrative of the writer's voyage into a new world

and toward the grasp of it and then onward to the process of sharing it publicly.

Now you don't have to share it publicly but I love the quote.

I love the idea that all journals are at heart trip journals

and so think on that because it does make you look at the world in a different way.

You know when you're on a trip everything seems like you're seeing it for the first time.

You're really open to the details in a new way.

You find meaning in some very mundane things,

whether it's like the street signs or the different kinds of,

you know, coffee cups that you might find somewhere.

Anyway, all of this is just to say when I write,

life feels less routine and more like a trip.

And I do really love a good trip.

Number five.

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Writing forces us to live in the moment.

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It sharpens our attention, it deepens participation,

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and it is a way to stay present in our lives.

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And I see this again and again in some of my writing.

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When I go back and I look at my many journals,

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I'm always pleased to see some of those details that I've noted.

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I mean, of course it's nice to mark the big things,

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the graduations, the births, the weddings, like all that stuff.

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But it's also sort of nice just to notice,

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hey, on this day, I took a walk on this particular street

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and I sat down and I had a cup of coffee and I wrote down five things I was thinking about.

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Okay, number six, a companion through every season.

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One of the great things about keeping a written journal is that you are never alone.

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You have a companion through every season.

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You have a way to connect to others.

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I feel like my very first memories of journal writing were so tied to visiting my grandmother,

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waking up really early.

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She was always up at least at five or six in the morning.

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We were always up very early as a small child and my cousins,

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my sister and I, and we would all climb into bed with my grandmother

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and she would be sitting there writing in one of her journals.

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And she did that every day of her life.

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And she had a little stack behind her.

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There was like a bookshelf right behind the head of her bed.

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She never let us read anything.

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She was very private and she always said,

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you can read these when I die.

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I will leave them for you all.

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And we accepted it and now I have them.

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And it is like having a conversation with my grandfather when I open them up.

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It's pretty incredible.

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So I just think that there's this bond also that happens.

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And I've seen this again and again with my cousin who later when we were a little older,

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we started writing in our journals together and then sharing what we had written.

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My sister has kept a journal forever and actually is the one who first got me into art journaling,

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so adding images and vision and beautiful things to your journal.

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And I've found that I connect really well with people who are also keeping written journals.

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You know, there was a woman at the camp I went to when I was about 14 and we totally bonded.

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We didn't really get along with anyone else at the camp.

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We were the outcast, the weirdos,

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but we really made friends and it was really,

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I think it was partly because of those journals.

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Journals are also just a place to keep project ideas, creative inspiration.

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It's a container for dreams and disappointments and grief and hope.

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And of course, it is your constant companion through any kind of uncertainty

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or loneliness when really you just need some time to yourself.

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I remember actually one of my most fruitful writing times was shortly after

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September 11th back in 2001 when I was living in Europe and working in a very small town,

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didn't know very many people and I was super lonely.

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I was really sad.

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I was super, super homesick and I would,

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you know, come home after work and grab a little food and write my journal

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and it just helped me process the events of what were going on.

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So I think that companionship can't be underestimated.

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It is really, really powerful.

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Before closing, I had wanted to tell you a story about my mother's journals.

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So my mom was a wonderful person.

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She died last year after a brief illness.

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She had a really great life,

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but not without some challenges and hardships.

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My parents went through a very hard time when I was a young child.

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They did not, it was not a great period of time for their marriage.

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I think in retrospect, not to overshare,

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but I think my father was sometimes somewhat violent with my mom

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and eventually got help and got some medicine and was able to kind of contain much of his anger,

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although it certainly reared its head from time to time.

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Anyway, my mother had kept a journal those early years

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and she became very frightened at some point point

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that he might find the journals and that he would retaliate in some way.

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And so she burned them.

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She burned the journals from those early years.

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So that was probably like late 60s into the early 70s.

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And, you know, I mourn the loss of those journals because I think that was a really interesting time in her life.

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She was a young mother.

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She had moved from New York City to a small town in New Hampshire.

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She was figuring out who she was with this new identity as a wife and a mother and all that stuff.

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And my dad was hard,

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you know, and I love my dad very much,

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but he definitely went through some very, very hard years.

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So, you know, she stuck with him.

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They did, the marriage stayed together and,

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and they, they kept going.

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And, you know, mom later,

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so probably 10, 15 years later,

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started keeping a journal again.

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And I think part of it was my sister and I,

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because we were doing it.

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Part of it was she was starting to keep notes in a little planner she had on her desk

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that was in the middle of the kitchen.

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Everybody read it.

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And this is sort of the counterpoint to my grandmother's very private journal.

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My mom finally was like, you know what?

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I'm just going to write it.

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And if you guys read it,

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well, then you're going to learn what's on my mind.

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And so she ended up having these journals that were very open.

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They were filled with photographs of people she loved,

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movies she wanted to see,

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restaurants she wanted to try,

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recipes she'd given a whirl at a dinner party,

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very much full of love and life and light.

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She kept them in super not fancy notebooks from the Rite Aid or whatever,

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you know, CVS, name your drugstore notebook.

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There was no fancy moleskin for my mom.

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She just, and it was all lined and,

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you know, the whole thing.

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But she ended up, when she started actually journaling again,

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she took it really seriously and as a result has left this incredible legacy.

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And I think one of the neatest things about this for me is that in her final two years,

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when her cognition started to decline and she was suffering from a bunch of physical stuff as well,

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she lost the ability to really read.

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People could read to her,

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but she wasn't able to go back and read the journals.

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But she'd put in so many photographs and pictures and,

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you know, pamphlets from things we've done or tickets from a movie stub or an art show or whatever it is.

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And so we We went through the journals together and it was the source of great remembering and appreciation.

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So I think that's a really wonderful component of those kinds of kind of keeping a journal.

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So she was in her 50s when she started to be clear,

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when she finally started again after the hard times with my dad.

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And so I think my one question for you is,

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when will you start?

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Because starting at 50 can still yield wonderful results.

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Finally, let's talk a little bit about the types of journals.

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I made a list of all the different types of journals because I think no one is perfect.

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You can do a little bit of each one and you can certainly mix and mingle,

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but I love all of them.

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And I'm going to just say this like almost like a poem.

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It's like a poem.

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There is a diary, there is a sailing log,

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a trip journal, a book log or a reading log,

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a fitness tracker, a bullet journal,

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a Hobonichi daily, a habit tracker,

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Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks which are considered a polymath log with sketches,

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writing, and formulas, a field notebook,

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encrypted diaries, visual emotional records from the example would be Frida Kahlo on that one,

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junk journals, art journals, sketchbooks,

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of course we talk about those most of the time here,

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a commonplace book, that's the old type of book where families would compile knowledge over the centuries.

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I mean this is we're going way back now to like the 15-1600s

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and those books would be passed down from family to family including things like recipes,

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herbal remedies, poetry, you name it.

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There's one that I just learned the name of that I think I don't know how to pronounce.

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I think it's a Zibaldoni.

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I'm going to look up that and learn a little bit more.

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A family Bible.

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Lots of family Bibles used to have space for notes and that Bible would make its way down through the family.

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A Florilegium, a curated book of flowers,

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poetry, and art all in one place.

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I just love all of this

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and I think the more you go into this the more interested and curious and open the world seems.

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So take a look and if you have not yet started your diary,

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if you have not yet started your journal,

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my question is why not?

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Thanks for watching.

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Come back again.

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I'll see you soon.

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Shadowing Practice: I kept a journal for 42 years and this is what happened - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Shadowing Practice: I kept a journal for 42 years and this is what happened - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

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What is the Shadowing Technique?