Unfold the Pages of Your Life – journal writing for
pleasure and purpose
With Lindsey Dawson
Daku Resort, Fiji
September 28-October 5, 2008
As the pages of your life roll out beneath
your pen, you’ll write every morning about how far you’ve
come and what you’re learning about the journey. It’s
about creating a very personal book you’ll want to keep
adding to once you’ve returned home. As you progress,
you will gain more understanding of the steps that have brought
you this far and can dare to express your hopes and dreams
for years ahead. By the end of the week you’ll have
begun to set down the evidence of a life well-lived –
your life, with all its complexity, richness, drama and humour.
It can be part memoir, part vision document, part storehouse
of everything that’s important to you.
How the course will run
Each morning will come alive as you talk,
laugh and then put pen to paper, embarking on a range of exercises
designed to unlock your creativity, polish your confidence
and enhance your sense of self worth.
The first four sessions will kick off at 9.30am, after a relaxed
breakfast, and run through until 12.30pm when it’s time
for a poolside lunch. Afternoons are given over to sleeping,
scribbling, swimming, shopping, local excursions... whatever
you desire.
- Day one: Connecting with each other
and with the act of writing.
- Day two: Delving back into memory to
encourage vivid recall.
Day three: Seeing – really seeing – these exciting
times in which we’re living.
- Day four: Getting a better fix on your
place in your family, your community, your world.
- Day five: Dreaming and planning for
your future.
- Day six: Sunset, 5pm to 7pm, a candlelit
gathering for expressing your thoughts about the week in
review and sharing one last shining piece of writing.
Why keep a journal?
Because it’s an excellent way to
making a coherent shape out of the messy events of life.
What is a journal?
Thoughtful people have long kept
personal diaries (as in the most famous and poignant example,
The Diary of Anne Frank), and journalling is the same thing
– it’s just a new word for a good old idea. A
journal is a notebook in which you record not just the everyday
detail of your life but the significance of events as they
occur around you and to you. Journalling is not just writing
down what’s happening, but how you feel about it. Says
Lindsey: “As I read what I’ve written in my own
journals over the last decade or two, they make me smile and
nod in recognition as I see behaviour patterns that I’m
still indulging in. Or I can pat myself quietly on the back
for having got over old blocks or upsets. My ardent scribblings
help me remember wonderful times and the bad ones too –
and the great thing is the way the bad bits can fall into
better perspective.” Over time your journal can be a
wonderful aid in recognising your own wisdom and progress,
or a great spur to ‘get over it!’ in some troubling
aspect of your life. It’s a place in which to do SWOT
analyses (as in strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
relating to your life situation and lay plans for your forward
path. Caught up in our busy daily routines we rarely have
time to stop and consider. A few minutes spent with your journal
from time to time builds a document that you can refer back
to later in order to re-check your values or your ambitions,
to help you stay on track and keep alive your long-term goals.
Who are you writing for?
That’s for you to decide. You can
create a journal as a purely personal project for your eyes
only – though at some stage in your life, depending
on the sensitivity of your content, you’ll need to decide
whether to keep or discard it! You may wish, however, to produce
a lasting testament for family members to enjoy in future.
It can even be something to gift, later on, to your nation’s
archives. How will future historians and fiction writers be
able to clearly see the challenges of living in our time if
we don’t leave written words behind? Think how modern
writers rely on early settlers’ diaries and letters
to give authenticity to their stories of colonial life a century
or two ago. Or you may have a great idea for a journal that
may eventually be published. Such writings have formed the
basis of many best-sellers e.g. Tuesdays with Morrie, in which
writer Mitch Albom recorded visits with his former college
professor as the older man laid out lessons for living as
his death grew near. A journal can be just words, or a more
visual creation in which you include drawings, photos, a feather
from the beach, a lock of a baby’s hair, a cutting from
a newspaper. Its scope and power are limited only by your
imagination.
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