Journal Writing Experience

This past week I have spent documenting my life in the form of a journal. I have used different techniques to help me do this. Some I found easier than others:

Description: I found this the easiest as I just said what I did in the day, this was also quite relaxing because it meant that I could reflect on my day. I think it could also be an idea to do two journals a day. One in the evening at the end of the day and one the morning after so that I had time to think about what has happened and make a better judgement based on a wide range of factors about what is going on rather than just reacting with my emotions.

List: I loved writing the list because people have so much going on in their lives that it was so easy to just list what I did. I found it quite hard to remember everything that went on in my day. It was like a memory exercise as it was a list of what I did rather than how I felt about it. I think it would be more difficult to write a list of my emotions in the day. That would be a very interesting diary to read. However I don't think that I would use this as a long term journal method as I don't feel you have chance to say enough.

Initial Reflection: My initial reflection was basically written with my emotions. Because I had reflected on my day strait away with out giving myself time to think things over and approach them in a conventional way.

Graphs Charts and Diagrams: At first I found it quite difficult to think of things to say and as I wanted to put it on the my blog. So I decided to do it in an 'out-of-five' star format. I found it quite difficult to think of things to say. But as soon as I had it was easy to draw up a graph because my two days were so different.

Evaluation:I enjoyed evaluating my day because it meant that I could think about the day with a clear head and not use my emotions and to clearly document the day.

What if: At first I had no idea what to say for this. I didn't know if it was something like writing a short story. I actually found it easier to think of things that I wouldn't like to happen rather than would like to happen. Maybe that shows a pessimistic side to my personality.

Another View: I left this till last as it was the one that I wanted to put off the most. I thought this would be a difficult task as I didn't know if the object had to have an emotion? Or how my 'bag' could have felt about something. I wrote about my day in the third person. Evaluating my actions, the good and the bad and I thought about how I should have done something. I wrote this a couple of days later as it allowed me to let go of my emotional attachment to the events within the day.

I really enjoyed the week's task, it was very good for me to make a diary as I found that I could think about my actions and and how I dealt with situations. This could also be good in the long run as I can look back on situations and it would give me a greater understanding of people management, thereby developing my interpersonal skills and my organisational abilities.