After three years of journalling weekly, I finally gave myself permission to take a break. I felt horrifically guilty about it for a while – breaking a commitment to myself always feels like failing – and journalling has always been a really positive way for me to reflect on what I’m thinking and feeling in any given week: a way for things I may or may not have noticed to bubble up to the surface. But, I also value experimentation and shaking routines and habits up a bit, at least for a while, to see what happens.
Stepping away has become an essential part of my art practice over time. I’d do some deep and extensive illustration work, then put it aside for a day, or sometimes a week, and re-visit with fresh eyes. I see things I never noticed before, and new ideas often come from a fresh look at work I was, at one point, so deeply in.
As it turns out, stepping away from the journal for a month has brought a similar sense of clarity and reflection to it. Not just about the day-to-day writing of the words and the weekly penning of thoughts, but the point of it; the purpose. Not only that, but there’s an eagerness within me that wasn’t there before, an eagerness to help other artists on a similar journey benefit from what I learn on mine.
Taking a bird’s eye look at the work on the journal, there are now over 180 individual journal entries! I’d never imagined that the journal itself would become a body of work but here we are. It’s an example of the things I’ve picked up over the years – things take longer than we expect, consistency over quality, chipping away at things, drip-by-drip, all come together to create something of substance. Something special.
Stepping away needs the opposite, too; periods of leaning in. And so now it’s time to do a bit of that again – just like refining a drawing after some time away. What I’ve learned is that perhaps three years of relentless journalling might be too much? Maybe the work would benefit from stepping away a little more regularly? But then again, maybe not. The fun bit is working it all out.