 Hi, my name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment. This week I wanted to talk about journaling and how I have been journaling for the last couple of years. I've kept a journal since I was five and could write barely. I got a diary with a friend one year and I really liked it. My sister did a lot of journaling so I'm sure I imitated that. She was much older than me so it was a way of being more like my cool big sister. There's some talk on YouTube about whether people like to write in fancy journals or in really plain journals. I am the type that if I do not love my journal and I mean adore it with my entire being, I won't write in it. If it is not inspiring, if it is boring, if it doesn't fit me at the time, I need to retire it and get a new journal that fits my moment in life. That might be the cover, it might be the paper, it might be the way it's bound, you know, like spiral versus a normal glue binding or something like that. It really needs to fit who I am at that time. So I have a very eclectic kind of collection of previous journals. One of the things I discovered in 2015 was the Midori Travels There Is Notebook, which is a leather kind of cover and then you put different inserts in it and whenever you fill up an insert you retire that and put a new one in. People use it as planners, as journals, as scrapbooking, all sorts of things and I have really enjoyed making my own Midori Travelers Notebook. I started by purchasing an 8.5 x 11 piece of leather and I actually dyed it leather dye navy colored. The official Midori Travelers Notebook special edition this year was navy and it was beautiful but very pricey. I spent $11 on the leather, another $6 on the leather dye and maybe $3 on the elastic. So instead of paying $60 I paid, you know, $20. The journal looks like this when it's kind of tied together. It has an elastic band that I added a star charm and some beads to. They were just stuff that I had lying around. I keep a fountain pen, just a simple pilot one that's bright yellow, which is my favorite color and a beautiful Japanese navy ink in it. I get a lot of pleasure out of my pins and how they write so that's really important to me with my journal. It has just a little sticky attachment so it fits in. I also keep a mechanical pencil for notes or things that I need to erase in. My journal currently starts with what they typically call a dashboard. It's usually laminated. If you put sticky notes on it, you can change it up really easily, it protects some of the other notebooks and it has my core desired feelings, the way I want to feel in the year and kind of my touchstones for decisions that I make. On the other side of that I have a monthly planner that I use at Pencil to mark out my week and plans if they change, easy to erase and I keep a couple months taped in with washi tape so it's easy to plan ahead. Following that I have a plastic folder which has a folder on one side and the zipper pouch on the other. In this folder I keep notes, tickets, some things for the season. During the fall I kept a dry leaf in it. I have a goose feather in it right now. I don't think I'm going to get rid of that one, I will probably stay. It's just very useful. I then have a weekly planner. Each page set up is a whole week and I stamp it to keep track of how much water I'm drinking, whether I do yoga in the night or the morning, my three most important tasks for the day and my work schedule, anything that happens. Every Sunday I kind of take a few minutes to stamp out and plan my next week to coordinate with my boyfriend what we're doing that week and set my intention on Sunday night when I do this for the whole week. It's also a nice way of journaling those daily things. My journals are really about feelings and big patterns and dreams. They rarely focus in on, oh I saw a concert or oh I did this. So having the planner right there is useful for that aspect of journaling. During that I have my actual journal and I use blank pages because I hate lines. I don't know how anyone writes on lines. They annoy me so much. I cannot journal with a lined notebook. So I use blank pages. I use the Midori inserts and the paper is so smooth and easy to write on. Sometimes I stick stickers in there or some washi tape or something to mix it up. I do any tarot readings that I do or OM readings in my journal as well. I do kind of date them and write occasionally, dreams I might write down, general feelings, frustrations and I love the small size of these journals. They allow me, if I want to make the cover really pretty or bright I can do that. If I get sick of it for some reason, I can take it out. There is such a little attachment or commitment to that specific journal. It's lovely. They also range from $4 to $9. There is a brand called Claire Apple or something like that. I'll leave a link below that does the same size, the Midori Traveler's Notebook size but for a cheaper cost. The paper is still great or the Midori official insert also works. In my sticker pouch I have stickers that I track things in my weekly planner and some kind of affirmations that I stick around the place whenever I need them. Then this does not seem quite as journally but I also keep notebooks for other things that happen all the time. I have a community garden notebook that I keep notes for minutes or projects that we're working on. They are done in graph paper because it's easy for planning and drawing and collaborating with other people. I also have a dreams and design one. This has a lot of four plans for houses and barns and kind of rid little lists, ideas, goals, kind of random stuff. It's also on graph paper because it's useful when planning, making lists. My final notebook is a Dungeons and Dragons character sheet kind of thing that I designed. On the back of my dashboard I have a bill tracker which I'm not going to zoom into. So every month I check off whether I paid that bill or not and that helps relieve my anxiety about money. So useful. More sticky notes. More pretty paper and sticky notes on the back. Then I have my leather cover. Putting all of this in one place has allowed me to dedicate more time to my actual journaling. I have kind of distilled some of the clutter that my journal would get into other notebooks so I'm given a better perspective when I read back on things of what's going on and especially on spiritual matters, I can see more clearly the patterns that are coming up. So for me, having everything in one place is what I need to make it convenient and efficient to journal, but I also have organized it in such a way that I can see what I need to see and keep track and remember the important things that are changing in my life. I know a lot of people also do like a separate notebook for tarot readings or things like that with their journal. So I think that this setup on the Midori's Travelers notebook would be really useful for pagans who are looking for a book of shadows, a journal, a book of mirrors, whatever you call it in its myriad of formats. It would be nice, I think, for a lot of people to keep that close at hand. Other nice thing about having a leather cover is that it gets scuffs, it ages, it develops its own life. And that as an animist is awesome, I can kind of see and feel that life being developed and that spirit coming forth and it stays really magical feeling. So my journal changes but is still classy looking and I can pop it out at a meeting and it doesn't look too weird but I know that it's magical and that it keeps track of so many wonderful and illuminating things in my life. Otherwise, in the comments I would love to know how you journal, whether you like the idea of kind of organizing things out or you like them all in one single notebook. Hope you're having a fabulous week. Thanks for watching and as always, may you find peace in the sacred grove.