Journal ideas in July

Do you write a journal?

For the month of July I’m joining Sue at Sizzling Towards 60 and Beyond for a month of journal prompts.

I used to keep a diary when I was younger and ended up burning most of them some years later!

As a new mother I kept notes of my daughters’ daily feeding patterns and milestones. These notes came in handy when I decided to write them each their birth story and present it to them on their 16th birthday.

Since then, what with bringing up a family, work commitments and, dare I say blogging, I have slipped in this habit of actually writing notes in a separate little book. I do have a ‘blog book ‘ where I sometimes jot down ideas, hashtags to remember, favourite bloggers and other blog related stuff but not a journal as such!

I have a monthly calendar which lists upcoming events, I have a digital calendar on my phone that reminds me to do things and be places and I have my brain full of ideas and thoughts which sometimes I transcribe into a post on my blog.

I think these days we are all so hooked into being busy to take time to stop, think and jot down some thoughts. Well that describes me anyway!

Hence Sue’s monthly theme for July, which I’m really looking forward to. Are you??

My plan for the month of July

My plan is to write a few notes on each daily prompt in my own little notebook and then summarise these thoughts into a weekly post on Saturdays and link up with Sue and anyone else who is tempted to join in. You could publish a post every day if you wanted to of course or just pick a prompt and use that as a guide! It’s your own challenge to use any way you want.

The idea for me is to look at the benefits of writing as a mindfulness exercise and get as creative, literal, or just plain honest, with each of the daily prompts.

The other thing for me is that most of my posts rely on my photographs to tell the story with some help from my words, but in these journal posts, I’m going to try to just use my words. We shall see how I go!!

#JournalinginJuly

Sue’s July theme reveal post:

What is #JournalingInJuly?

This may not be your idea of keeping a journal but I’m looking at it as a challenge to extend my creative writing.

• I’ve put together 31 topics – one for each day. The writing prompts are designed especially for those of us who have difficulty putting pen to paper or for the more experienced journaler (is that a word?) perhaps provide some new ideas.
• It can be bullet points, a few paragraphs or as long as you wish. The idea is to think, write and perhaps learn more about yourself.
• I will be having guest contributors each week to write about journalling and/or taking a topic from the list to write about.
• For the Bloggers, I have teamed up with Debbie from Deb’s World to host a link up each Saturday for the month of July only. You can select a topic from the list and write about it then link up for us all to share and enjoy.

Journaling can be a very personal thing so obviously you may want to keep your writing and thoughts just for you.

Here is the list of topics and I do hope that you will have some fun and enjoy this ‘challenge’ for July. Remember NO PRESSURE, some days you may find inspiration from the prompt and want to write and other days you won’t. I would also love to hear your feedback and perhaps you have some topics you could add to the list going forward.

Thanks to Sue for her insightful, helpful and supportive monthly themes!

Starting from July 1 – My thoughts

So from Monday July 1, I will be starting #JournalinginJuly, making notes on each day’s prompts and then on Saturday 6 July I will link up with Sue, and anyone else who feels like joining in, to share my week.

Sue has setup a special link that will appear in our Saturday posts and you can add your posts and thoughts and maybe visit others to see how they have responded.

Are you interested in joining in? If so leave me your thoughts and don’t forget to check back for my Journaling in July post next Saturday.

By the way, I still can’t believe we’re actually heading into July already, can you?

Deb x

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