MakeMyJournal.com-my new website. We just launched it yesterday and I'm so excited! I love the new look! And I'm excited to make journals and notebooks for people who like a traditional method of recording the events of their lives.
There is something so appealing to me about a journal. It's something tangible, something to hold in your hands, something to pass down for generations, or burn, depending on what's contained within the pages of your book. As a bookbinder, I have quite the collection of books and journals. I have a personal journal for the thoughts and ideas that are too personal to share on my blog. I have an ideas journal/sketchbook that I make notes and sketches in whenever inspiration strikes. I have a journal to take notes in whenever I listen to an inspirational speech. In the past I've had reading journals, travel journals and quote journals. Journal's have always been a part of my life. There is a record, though it may not be as comprehensive as I would like it to be, but there is a record, recorded in my own handwriting. It's unedited, it's real and very true. I love my journals, and I love that I now can make journals for myself and others.
I am always struck by the amount of information that we have about the past because somebody thought it was important enough to write down. We know what shade of blue Michelangelo used for the background of the Sistine chapel. We know where the marble came from for the Florence Cathedral. We know intimately what happened on the battlefields of the Revolutionary War. We have first hand accounts of life and death and love, all because people recorded their most intimate experiences in their journals.
Technology has given us many new methods of keeping records. People can use their word processing programs, or blogs. But these things are not as personal as a regular old journal, written by you in your own handwriting, with your personality shining through. I know I edit myself on this blog. Some things are lost in the writing for an audience. Maybe it's intimacy. Maybe it's a little of the truth. My journal is all me. It's my everyday. It's my religious experiences. It's my frustration and my joy. It's the fight I had with Jeremy the other day and how I felt about it. It's my goals and my desire to better myself. It's the private me, and I like the private me--I just don't necessarily think I want the world to know everything about her. And so I write in my journal. Where do you record the private intimate details of your life?