Immediate, Imperfect and Grounding

“In the journal I do not express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.”—Susan Sontag

I am someone who has kept journals for most of my life. And Sontag gets it right. I don’t write and draw (paint and collage) in journals to share secrets with myself.

I mean, ok, sure, some pages are private, but mostly, as I look at my shelf of notebooks filled with words and pictures, I see that these meditations and ruminations are me becoming myself.

Through this work, I am stepping into my artist self—and I am stepping into greater understanding that what I do might be helpful to others.

So this personal blog is a journal, too, though one I have yet to successfully sustain—or be sustained by. What would happen, I wonder, if I remove the heavy lifting of writing, editing, publishing, and just approach it for what it is: a personal blog—a digital journal—immediate and imperfect and grounding?

What if, like my physical Sketchbook Journal, I take just a little time every day to capture just one thought or idea—one snapshot—as briefly as possible? What would I choose to express? To share?