I am still working on my field note blanket, not however, as a daily project. Two years are documented this way, the rest is more a documentation of a moment, an observation. The blanket will be done when it is done. It is a kind of journal. A journal in that I have recorded an observation about a day, a moment, an experience.
I've gathered more thoughts about journal keeping, in particular a response to Grace who wondered about the difference between a journal and a field note:
- A journal or diary might document anything. A thought, an experience, an emotion, a reaction. It may start from any experience.
- A field note starts with place specifically, with documentation of the environment. Field notes haven't remained objective for me as a journal with a strictly scientific perspective would have because my emotions and responses are reflected. In this way they have become a field note about human emotion too.
- A field note is a type of journal entry.
- The perspective that humanity is separate from the environment and the environment is a resource for us to use doesn't feel true to me. I am part of the field note. I am part of the moment.
- There are so many ways to journal. We can write, record, photograph, stitch, draw. A journal need not be paper, it's the act of recording and documenting in a continuous manner. A record of time passing.
- Journal keeping may fit some people's learning styles better than others. For myself, I need to gather thoughts and ideas and express them somehow as part of the process of integrating knowledge. In this way it is a tool. There is research about this but I'm not looking for it right now.
- I have rarely looked back on my journals and yet when I do I am struck by how consistent I am in my thinking. There is something worth considering here.
- When I do look back at journal entries, it is usually to revisit important moments in my life that I have documented...my trip to Italy for example. Still thinking about why we keep the things we do.
- When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams. Her mother's journals were blank, unwritten in... Thinking about the subtitle, "Fifty-four Variations on Voice."