Journaling for Creative Expression and to Remember Gratitude and to Re-regulate

I've tried to maintain a journal since childhood. I had one of those children's diaries with a flimsy lock, which didn't last long at all. I've also never had the discipline to write daily. And then in crisis moments of my life in my 20s and in my nascent teaching career, I filled composition notebooks sporadically and promptly dumped them when they were filled--too much ranting and hurtful accusations that did not need to be directed at the people in my life. 

Two years of therapy has helped me to re-regulate after some emotional dysregulation, and my journaling has been part of that training. I'm constantly working on those life skills of self-soothing, positive self-talk and distraction. This blog records and reminds me of all the little things that give me pleasure and that enable me to not allow my emotions run the show and to exercise better judgement. Recently, I downloaded a running app to my phone to be my other electronic journal of my exercise, which also helps control my stress and deal with negative emotions.

One of my favorite journals is my clay journal, which really is a notebook to record my hand building, glazes, successes, mistakes, and potential ceramics projects. It's so beat up and almost filled. Eventually, I'll find another one, and 5" x 8" size seems right. 

My other favorite journal is my sketchbook. It's taken me more than a few years to be almost filled. I'll likely get another one with bigger dimensions and with multi-media paper so that I can paint in it too.

I've also two physical journals, one of them a day book for that attitude of gratitude.

My other journal is for dot journaling with bullet points or lists of the smaller goals to add up into the bigger things I want to accomplish in my life as well as to write stream-of-consciousness about the people in my life. Basically, I've filled it with my dialectical behavioral therapy exercises and is a record of the people I've fallen out with, people who betrayed my trust, and people who used me.

But I've learned a lot from those painful experiences and from letting go of those people that disregulate me. Letting them go allowed me to happen upon some beautiful souls and experiences. I am loved by someone I never thought I would have and have formed new friendships with people that have been even more meaningful and turned into much stronger relationships. To put it metaphorically, in my own book of life, I have chapters that end with people at some point, but I also have plot points and characters in my book which are still being written.