I have finally figured out why I’ve gone through so many journals in the last two months.

You know how it goes; you find one, fall in love with it, and after doing a few entries, find it’s flaws; the soft cover’s beautiful, but you can only work in it on a table. The notebook’s easy to use, but things fall out easily. The small spiral works great, but the pages aren’t big enough.

But the true quest is much deeper: finding or creating perfection on the outside will help create “perfection” on the pages. We believe the journal itself has magical qualities, ones that, when you’re matched with your paper soul-mate, your true artistic self will appear and every journal page you create will be beautiful, true, and loved.

It’s much like our lives. We look in the mirror and think, “If only I were thinner or prettier, life would be so much easier.” We hide our flaws under loose clothing or dark eyeliner, hoping to distract the eye from the flaws you believe your body to posses. If only you had money to get the better clothes, or the nice haircut, or maybe the time to diet…

We look to these outside things instead of working on our souls. Deep inside, that is where the real work and growth can and will happen. Your outsides, your body, is only a vessel to help you move and work in the physical world – why do we give it so much sway over our minds and hearts? Does it truly matter if you LOOK a certain way, or KNOW your own truth?

Have you ever noticed how some people just seem to glow? It doesn’t matter what they’re wearing or how they look; the world is attracted to them. It is because their soul is shining through their skin, radiant and beautiful in its truth and growth.

It is the same with our journals. Have you ever seen a page or pages you love and thought, “If I had a journal like that, maybe my pages will look better.” I know I have. Instead of focusing on the insides, we’re worrying about the type and kind of journal we use!

Pour all that energy onto the page! Focus not on the vessel, but on the pages. THAT is where your soul will sing and learn and soon, you, too, will begin to glow…. Soon, you won’t worry about how you look or what your circumstances are, but live in love. Because God, or whomever you believe in, WANTS you to create, to be happy, and to learn who you really are deep inside.

Tomorrow, I plan to sit down with myself, meditate, and listen to the goals my soul wants to achieve in the coming year. Only on the cusp of the new one can we really know what we’d like to do with the blessing of another year of life on this beautiful world. But I can tell you what one of mine will be:

The journal I have right now, TODAY, is the one I will use until every page is full.

It’s going to be hard – really hard – as I have journal ADD….I really DO switch ‘em all the time! In 2008, however, I want to find myself, really find myself, and focusing on that instead of where that’s happening can only help.

I challenge you all to do the same.

Starting the 1st, I’ll be posting weekly prompts designed to help you, too, find your own truth through visual journaling. Those entries will be accompanied by an essay – my thoughts on the topic. I encourage you to keep up, post your own entries, and share your stories – I’ll be posting them here as well! So if you’ve got a thought, prompt, or story to share, send it in and it just might get up as a guest post.

And now, some business:

There WON’T be a Winter 2008 issue of Page by Page. As it’s taken so long to get the Fall 2007 issue finished and out, I’d like to stay to schedule and spend a little extra time on the Spring 2008 issue. I can tell you the next journal artist is amazing and I can’t wait to interview her! That also gives you a little more time to get those journal pages in to be featured in the Gallery section.
The Journal Girl mailing list will be starting a rolling journal page swap on the 1st, so c’mon over if you’d like to be involved!
Other than the 'zine, mailing list swap, and a Flickr project, I won't be doing anything else until I get things figured out. The whole getting things out late has been a major source of unhappiness and shame in my life, and I don't want that to happen again. I've even hired an intern to help in assembly and distribution, and will be creating a home office (until now, I've been working on my laptop in various cafes and assembling things on the kitchen table). I think having a space dedicated to the 'zine will help streamline the process, as well as give me a space to store back stock...right now, things are so scattered, I have to search for things!

I wish you all a safe and happy New Year's!

<3,
Kira