Journaling- I still suck at it!

Yeah, I had to get comfortable with the idea that I can't possibly write about everything. A little bit (especially written about well as suggested in your quote) is better than nothing!

 

write it to a friend! or invisible person?
or pull the photo you want to scrap and show it to one of your kidlets, ask them about it?

I am long winded in mouth and typing...lol
journaling is my favorite part...eek

 

Great quote Farrah. I have been better at putting journaling on there. I always say I'll go back and add more later but at least I have put the simple facts of what was happening. Even those simple facts are growing some for me. Keep up the good work. Give yourself credit for what you are doing.

 

Thanks for sharing. Great quote, great advice. I journal daily, have been doing it digitally since January 2013. And if I'm on a vacation, I write it all down. But too often, the mundane sets in and each day sounds like the next..

 

I often write "we had fun" or "we enjoyed ourselves", but rarely do I think to say why. If I included that, it would make the journalling more interesting.

 

I suck at it too. I never know what to write, and I feel like when I do write something it sounds weird. Then I always think "I wrote way too much, or not nearly enough." I'm happy just putting the date on the page, and a brief description if need be.

 

A lot of my photos of the grandchildren and grand-nieces are given to me so I don't really know the full story behind the photo. So in most instances I will scrap the photo in the way it 'speaks' to me, using wordart. For those photos that I have taken I will journal a bit, just enough to explain or the tell the story behind it but I confess that I just love doing the ARTY bit!!

 

I like to journal the words I would have said if you were looking at a photo and I was speaking over your shoulder about that day/event etc.

 

What do you want to journal? About the facts of the photo? About how you felt? About how your kids felt? Figure out *what* you want to say before you tackle *how* to say it.

 

Journaling is my very favorite part! I am an okay photog & an okay scrapper so I need my journaling to make the page shine AND make it more 'me.'

I focus on the story behind the story -- what does someone need to know abt this page that is not apparent in the photos? What happened just before or just after the photo was taken that will add meaningful context to the reason why this photo or event or memory is important? Why am I scrapping this aside from it's cute/it's fun/it needed to be included in the chronology of the year?

Any journaling is better than no journaling, and your kids/family/friends won't care if you are a terrible speller or grammarian. They will remember WHAT you said not HOW you said it.

 

I'm like you, the journaling is the hardest part for me and I struggle with it too. I will be watching this thread for tips.

 

I just convinced my boyfriend to write the journaling for one of my pages. I used the line "It'd be nice to have your voice in these books too.." I think I have just found my new secret weapon!

 

I try to write the story of the photo when it has one... And, I generally address the journalling to the folks in the picture. So, if it's a photo of my daughter, I write directly to her... You did this, you went here, you wanted to try... etc. But, I'm windy and sometimes I think I write too much journalling on my pages, lol...

Huggles!!
~Sarah~

 

I'm a writer by nature. I love to write it all out. So journaling is easy for me.

Great tips for journaling. Another one, maybe bullet points would help at least get something down. I also journal to the people in the photos, so to my daughter etc...

 

I am also a writer by nature and this is probably the one thing that is hardest for me most in digi scrapping. I love clean pages (not that I'm good at them haha) and when I paper scrap I find myself hiding my thoughts in envelopes and behind pictures. The longer I scrap the more I realize that, once I'm gone, my stories will live on in my pages (good or bad). I want people to read the good, bad, ugly and fantastic and have those memories forever. I've been incorporating that into my digi scrap pages now.

 

Does anyone use the collect phone ap? I could see it as a great a format to jot daily notes for future journaling pages. Love it to document my day/month/year. I use it for keeping track of my 52 hike challenge (.com). An app to keep up with daily achievements or "firsts" you or your family do/go. When I downloaded it, it was free. There might be a small fee for it now.

Thanks for the inspiration Farrah.

 

Exactly! I started scrapbooking because I wanted to tell the story behind the photos, because many times, although the photos can tell the story, they don't tell the whole story, like what the people in the photo felt or how you felt as you took the photo. Normally, I write as I would be speaking to my son. Here's an example. I could have left the journaling off, but I wanted to tell the story behind his last day of middle school:


Just start little by little. You can do it!

 

I'm what you might call a practical journaler. Names, dates, places, times, what happened. I've never, ever been a daily journaling type. I've never enjoyed writing. I mostly don't want most of what I may write there for someone to read down the road. I figured what is most important is what happened.