{"id":3179,"date":"2016-02-23T10:38:51","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T18:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/?p=3179"},"modified":"2016-02-23T10:38:51","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T18:38:51","slug":"journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/journal\/","title":{"rendered":"Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/span> conversation about journaling comes round on the Camino forums<\/a> every so often – what do you use, how do you do it, and so forth. Rather than ramble there on scattered threads, I thought it might be better to ramble here, where at least my ramblings have the virtue of being together in one place.<\/p>\n

\"20130414-174256.jpg\"<\/a>To be brief: I journaled on the Camino. And I’ll do it again.<\/p>\n

When I blogged from the Camino, I generally took the text from my journal, having tidied up the language and edited my thoughts for electronic publication.<\/p>\n

But a year after our first Camino, I also posted my journal entries verbatim<\/a>. I wanted to walk back through the unvarnished, unedited thoughts and feelings of those days.<\/p>\n

On the Camino, I wrote every day, sometimes several times a day. Always at night, trying to summarize where we walked, where we stopped, who we met, what we saw. But also during the quiet moments at second breakfast over a caf\u00e9 con leche.<\/p>\n

It’s important to record your insights, your spiritual musings, the state of your mind. But no less important are the ordinary things: food, weather, aches and pains. Your evolving Camino family.<\/p>\n

\"2016-02-23<\/a>Don’t feel the need to be profound. Don’t self-edit. Just let it pour out of you higgeldy-piggeldy. Give yourself permission to blither. You can set it in order later, if you wish.<\/p>\n

Don’t be afraid to record minutiae – or even silly thoughts – but try to write down the big ideas and big experiences too.<\/p>\n

And do it as soon as you can. Sharp details fade in the memory quicker than you think. Write them down.<\/p>\n

I also stuffed my journal with papers I picked up at various places – holy cards, maps, notes, even a restaurant napkin (from the Drunken Duck<\/a> in Logro\u00f1o). <\/p>\n

\"8729816764_ab80b69b3e_b\"<\/a>For me, these are important memory aids (as well as souvenirs), which can evoke the time and place and add immeasurably to my journal entries. You can overdo this, obviously. I probably did.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I had to use a rubber band to keep my journal closed!<\/p>\n

So – what kind of journal should you bring?<\/p>\n

That’s a question whose answer is going to be different for every pilgrim. Some are going to want lines, grids, dots, and so on. I prefer blank pages.<\/p>\n

And then there’s size – pocket? Standard novel size? Digest? Letter? I took a pocket Moleskine for brief notes (because I always carry a pocket Moleskine), but my journal itself was 6″ x 8″, which I feel is a good size. It’s not so big that it won’t fit in the pack, but it’s not so small that you can’t put in a lot of text per page (not to mention a lot of extra stuff!)<\/p>\n

\"2016-02-23<\/a>Now a normal notebook of that size might be a little too heavy to carry. Paper can be surprisingly heavy! <\/p>\n

However, the book I took is made in Nepal from lokta paper<\/a>, which is very strong and very light. As an added bonus, I really enjoy writing on it – the texture of the paper is a delight, and it takes ink well without running or blotting.<\/p>\n

You can purchase these books at Barnes and Noble<\/a> for about $11. The last time I visited my local store, they had stacks <\/em>of them.<\/p>\n

I purchased two of these for our upcoming Camino.<\/p>\n

On our last Camino, I started running out of room in the book at about Le\u00f3n, so I had to buy a new book locally. It was very nice, but way too heavy. I found that I wrote much less frequently and much shorter entries.<\/p>\n

The lesson is that the paper and the book really do make a difference. So find something you enjoy writing in, and write write write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A conversation about journaling comes round on the Camino forums every so often – what do you use, how do you do it, and so forth. Rather than ramble there on scattered threads, I thought it might be better to ramble here, where at least my ramblings have the virtue of being together in one place. To be brief: I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gear","category-ruminations","category-thom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3179"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3203,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3179\/revisions\/3203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomryng.com\/camino\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}