Journal writing experience - Task 2b

Ok, so time now to talk about how keeping a personal journal is actually going..? hmm. I'm not gunna lie, I am struggling a bit. As someone who commits a lot of time to different things everyday (dance work, music, stock trading) and generally has a busy schedule, I am really finding it hard to even find time to sit down and write down my thoughts in a bullet point style of writing. The more time that goes past, the easier I am finding it, so I'm hoping this is just a learning curve and that I'll get used to it soon.

After reading through the module handout, I really liked the idea of different styles of journal logging. I did try on my Friday journal post to explore the whole "what if?" way to write as It's not how I usually write and it proved for a very interesting result, largely because I had a rather unusual day anyway so I seized the opportunity to write in a skeptical/ponderous fashion. "What if I'd just left it?" was probably the sentence I pondered over for the longest time after writing my diary entry.

Mostly my personal journal entries are descriptive and evaluative. I read back and a lot of what is written are things like "overall the show went well" and "need to change this lift grip to make it smoother" but I do also like the idea of having a more list based journal input. I am looking at a list of pros and cons on this Friday entry and seeing things like:

- energetic
- immersed
- artistically satisfied

but also:

- nervous
- apprehensive

as I said, it was a very up and down day.

 I'm really starting to understand why people do keep a personal journal for the sheer fun of it as it has been nice to read back on previous days and get an insight in to how I was feeling and how my day panned out. My only problem is finding time and documenting throughout the day. I read in the comment section of another blog that someone suggested keeping voice notes on their phone and reflecting on it at the end of the day. I thought this was actually a really useful tool as sometimes I thought to myself "ahh, I have to remember that and put it in my journal" and then I find myself sat scratching my head and driving myself slightly crazy trying to remember that one particular point. Having said that, as I'm sat writing this blog post about trying to remember that specific point, it just came back to me, thanks brain.

From reading the above you can probably tell that I'm still getting to grips with personal journal keeping as well as blogging in general but I think over time it will definitely get easier an I hope that people reading can see it throughout my blogging journey.

Task 2a: Reflective Practice

So time to start keeping a private journal huh? Not exactly sure how this will pan out for me but I am quite excited about the prospect. As the human brain apparently experiences approximately 50-70,000 thoughts a day.. it might be nice to try and put a few down on paper to reflect back on not only for the sake of my BAPP learning, but for personal enjoyment as well.

So where to begin? Any suggestions? I wonder if I'll end up writing in a different manner to how I write these blog posts. So far I have just been writing as I go and letting everything emerge onto the screen as it leaves my brain but I'm wondering if keeping a personal dairy will help me to become a better public blogger also? My current method of writing seems to be: get everything in my head onto paper as quickly as possible and then arrange it later. I guess only time will tell as my blogging continues.

I'm curious how my attitude towards BAPP will change as I become closer to deadlines or as I feel like I have written a particularly good blog post. Having somewhere to store thoughts throughout a good week or a bad week seems slightly daunting right now, but I think will be very rewarding to read either at the end of the month, or at the end of my whole BAPP course.

As someone who has never kept a diary throughout any point of my life, I am hoping that it is something I will stick with. The only real form of memory keeping I seem have is countless amounts of random photos. For me, I absolutely love stumbling across a photo and relaying in my brain how I felt at that moment, where I was in my life and what proceeded the event afterwards. I've often wondered just how amazing it would be to watch a movie of your own life.. has anyone else thought that too? Perhaps this journal/diary keeping will be the beginning of something I keep doing for the rest of my life, who knows.

I read Bens blog post about keeping a personal journal and completely agreed when he said "It feels strange to work on something that isn't initially for presentation however we are encouraged to use excerpts towards later modules." I think I will have to make an active effort to write regularly in my journal so I can track closely where it takes me throughout the upcoming months and when evaluating it in months to come.

My Flickr

With my last post being all about creating a profile for yourself and advertising yourself to the world.. I bring you my own Flickr. I must admit, I'm not usually one to enjoy looking at photos of my dancing or just of myself in general but I will endeavor to upload more dance pictures as time progresses as I'm hoping it will be interesting for others to see what kind of dance works I have done so far in my professional career.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/140683803@N06/

Hope you enjoy having a read through