I
sat down with my art journal this evening and started to write while
watching some TV. (I love me some Amazon streaming.) I reacted to some
of the personal ephemera from my last days at the DayJob. I wrote and
wrote some more. then I looked at what I had been writing and what I’d
been reacting to and I asked myself the most important journaling
question ever:

Why am I reacting in this particular way to this particular item and moment?

I
looked hard at myself and realized that the answer was in my head. My
reaction was less about the other person as it was about me.

I control my reactions and actions.

While
it’s useful to explore the negative emotions and ideas that come along
with those reactions it’s also important to explore the reasons behind
those reactions and actions. The further exploration is the hard and
most useful part of journaling.

Is
the page pretty? Hell no. I’ll add a few more layers of collage and
stuff but honestly it isn’t a pretty page but it’s a useful page. There
is more meaning to the page than anyone else will ever see.

These pages are an example of some of the work I'm doing for my upcoming zine, "My Headlines and Stories."