What is visual journaling?

Part 1: The rules, when to do it, how it can save a life, and how boundaries make it better.

I’ve recently retired my online visual journaling course because it was time for me to move on, but it’s still very much a practice I use to help me navigate this thing called life.

Especially when life is intense. (Reading through Ijeoma Oluo’s post, How We Get Through This, and Devon Price’s post, Supporting the Suicidal No Matter What helped me wade through some global and personal intensity recently.)

And for me, my visual journaling practice has also saved my life. More than once. More than twice.

Some people I’ve had the pleasure of working with have said the same.

So I thought it might be worthwhile to share some details about visual journaling and how it has helped me in case you’re curious about it for yourself.

This is only part 1. And it’s a long one! (You can click "View entire message" to read the entire post if this has landed in your inbox.)

Soon I’ll share Part 2 with you.

I suspect that there will be a Part 3 and perhaps even a Part 4. I’ll keep you posted if that changes.

Over the next few posts, we’ll talk about:

• Supplies, and how much you can create with so little.

• How to get over your fear of the blank page.

• How to batch your work so you can use your limited time wisely.

• How to work with prompts.

• Heaps of prompts for you to try for yourself.

• How to interpret what you create. «MOST IMPORTANT»

I’ll even share some of my personal pages and explain more about them.

Of course, sharing this information with you in this way won’t feel the same as it would if we were sitting around a table together passing paints, and magazines back and forth while we chat and laugh our way through making fun messes in our journals. However, I’m just an email or comment away if you have questions. So please ask them.

And if I ever feel the urge to facilitate visual journaling groups again, you’ll be the first to know.

Image description: photo of a two page spread that Olwen made in one of her visual journals. It’s a mixture of collage, scribbles/doodles and drawings with the words “Creativity Garden” pasted on the right page.

The term "visual journaling" helped me get over many of the insecurities I had about "art journaling". 

I thank Sheree for that reframe and for scheduling in three hours of visual journaling time every single morning during her retreat in Iceland. Although initially I wondered what the fuck I had agreed to when I saw all that time on our itinerary. But soon having that dedicated time each day to process what I’d seen, heard, felt, tasted, touched and thought made me fall deeper in love with the practice. Soon, those three hours flew by and after a day of adventuring around Iceland, you’d often find me visual journaling into the early morning hours once we arrived back at our home base. 

Previously, I had tried to make art in a book… art journal… for years. Unfortunately, I often got stuck, or I completely stopped because I kept comparing myself to what other people had made. This only lead me to find fault with everything I had created, so it was easy to convince myself that I should give up. I was certain I’d make nothing as great as some random person I was comparing myself to. 

But then, using the word “visual” instead of “art”, a simple switch, surprisingly took the pressure off and I felt freer to make and create whatever I felt like. 

For no good reason, I thought of ART as requiring skill, experience, and talent, and usually someone else had more of all those things than me.

Whereas VISUAL just meant that it was something I could see. It didn’t matter if it was a word, a picture, a mark, a line, a photograph, or simply a scribble. Whatever it was, I just needed to see it with my eyes. It didn’t have to be “good”, "it didn’t have to be “perfect".

I just needed to see it.

This realization helped me focus more on how I felt during the process of creating. It made me curious to experiment and try new things. It also helped me resist the urge to copy someone else's work or technique 100% to feel like I had accomplished something.

It was a great reminder that I’m the person who wants to know how you did something, but I have zero interest in copying you because I want to make it my way! 

Thankfully, my kid also helped me identify who is an artist, so I have an easier time calling myself one today. And I think that what I’ve created in my journals is art. 

Who Is An Artist?

BUT…

Creating art in a journal is not what I set out to do. 

Let me tell you a little more about what I consider visual journaling to be...