January review in my Inner Work Journal

End of January signals the end of our Summer School holidays and the beginning of a new school year and back to routine. I've been so lucky to have an awesome start to my year : a relaxing holiday away, art making time, and the offer of a few more hours at work. I'm happy with my focus words of the year, I've completed 3 spreads in my new art journal, very inspired by my Rumi art cards project and I've completed a quilt. This seems a good time to talk about my Inner Work journal - I began this practice mid-January 2017 and now wouldn't be without it. I'm on my fifth journal.

They are just ordinary hard-cover exercise books which are a place for memory-keeping, saving various printed inspirations, daily journaling, more in-depth personal writing in response to things that happen or sometimes from class prompts, as well as written responses to tarot pulls and my weekly oracle card. It's a way of digging deeper into self-knowledge and development. I thought I'd share how I work in my journal in case you want to try it too. At the beginnning of the month I set up my focus for the month - creative projects, any important social events, space to track when I blog, and the facing page for noting my oracle and tarot cards - these pages come from the Southern Hemisphere printable PDF which you can purchase HERE. (she also has a Northern Hemisphere version of course)

There's space to add photos and notes about my progress in the month - this is my finished January page : 

 That PDF is also where I get my weekly journal pages which start out looking like this

When I glue them in I make sure there is space at the bottom to print out a few photos so at a glance I can remember some highlights of my week. And I note my Oracle guidance for the week at the top of the page.

If you follow my blog at all you will have read this month about our gorgeous family holiday in Hawaii. I was really good about keeping up my daily and more detailed written journaling but when I was flicking through the pages they weren't looking colourful and interesting enough so I spent a bit of time sorting that out.

I decided that I could add tape to my pages and I have now made that a regular pretty addition to my written journal pages

Whilst in Hawaii I collected some postcards and ephemera 

I put these to good use as flip-outs and an insert of ephemera built up on one of the maps

Note you can also print out and stick in emails as a way of memory-keeping as well.
Other things that go in this journal are my #arteveryday photos for my own continued motivation

Inspiration from others as well as printing photos of my own art

and at the end of every month I print out what I've been reading and watching

My focus for January came from the first letter of my word Shine : Self-care. I've tried to establish good habits for the year ahead and I enter February with my focus on Healthy practices. 

My art project list feels manageable for the year, and I may have an opportunity to teach in February which will be fun if there is enough interest to enable that to happen. 
I hope I've inspired you to start some kind of life documentation and regular written journaling. It really is a wonderful addition to any kind of creative practice.