I’ve mentioned journaling a few times on Instagram and here on the blog and have received some questions about how I journal.  I know there are a lot of “journaling methods” out there and I wouldn’t say I follow any specific method, but just started writing and figured out the best way to organize it all for my brain and my creative work. The first thing I learned is that writing everything in one notebook didn’t work.  My ideas, to-dos, thoughts, plans, and notes were like a debris field scattered across too many notebooks that I had to sift through every time I wanted to reference something I wrote down.  It would’ve been fine if my journaling was just about putting something on paper, but I journal so I can remember and revisit things.  I collect quotes, fragmented ideas, and thoughts, notes on books I read, sermons I listen to,

On my @marianparsonsart Instagram, I shared my very first oil painting along with this caption… Number one. This was my first attempt at oil painting just over two years ago. You can see my tentative use of the paint. The barely-there stippled cloud declares my uncertainty. The mishandling of the colors and weak composition show my lack of knowledge and skill. ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ But, you can’t get to painting number 500 or 1000 or 10,000 without having a number one. ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Don’t compare your number one to someone else’s number 500 or 10,000. Let your number one be your number one…in all of its embarrassing artistic immaturity. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ You have to start somewhere and this is where I started. ⠀⠀ As a comparison, this is my most recent landscape painting, almost two years and around 400 paintings, a dozen online art courses, and 100 art books later… I felt