I’m always jotting, scribbling, and otherwise testifying to my life through words.
It’s been that way since I could write. I always wanted to capture what I saw around me. I also liked the feeling of focus and creation when putting words on paper. The rest of the world would totally vanish. When I was ten years old, I spent the entire summer copying down every entry about the Greek gods from the Encyclopedia Britannica – just for the joy of writing. I was never happier.
I journal every day. By pen. In various notebooks. I write on the laptop when it is something formal or impersonal. Sometimes, when I am working out something “deep” in my brain, I will type it … but only to use it as a draft. It’s not real until I handwrite it.
A while back I was watching a YouTube video by a mixed media artist who explained that her mixed media work is part art and part journaling. She used a word I had not heard before. She referred to her art journals as “commonplace” journals. I was fascinated with her results, although they are much more sophisticated than mine could ever be (she has a killer brain, with all kinds of really neat things flitting through it). What she wanted to teach in the video was that a commonplace book is a collection of inspirational words.
They could be poems or quotes. They could be inspired by memes or news articles. Lyrics or conversations. Words, written or spoken, that catch our attention. Her commonplace book included facts that she came across that intrigued her. I loved that one of her entries was about a bird she had read about in Africa. She was fascinated by it, so wrote a full page about it, collaging pictures of it. It included her plans for her garden. Records of her travels. And some pages were purely art with no words (either copies of art that inspired her or her own mixed-media collages).
Historical writers of commonplace journals captured tidbits of knowledge, indexing them into books that were meant to become part of collective knowledge. They go back to classic Greek and Roman times. They became more sophisticated as time passed, becoming detailed and encyclopedic, with extensive indexes, especially during the Renaissance. The tradition formally established by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius expanded through the centuries. Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were big into them. And they have a strong contemporary following.
A true commonplace book is not a personal journal. They are devoted to knowledge-making. Writer Ryan Holiday described commonplace journals as –
…a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations
and information you come across during your life and didactic pursuits
I had to look up the definition of “didactic,” just so you know (not too proud to admit that). That reminds me … I need to put its definition in my commonplace journal.
Bottom line … facts, figures, inspirational bits … anything that is worth looking at in the future. Things that make you think. Things you might want to revisit.
Blogger Kevin Eagan described them as a framework for a “mind palace.” I love that! If it rattles around in your brain, it is worth capturing. He explains that his journal is a great way to link things that his subconscious knows somehow go together, but without reflection on what he writes he would never make the connection.
I’ve got my own little mind palace now. Or at least the start of one. I have a very big sketchbook (it is actually called the Very Big Sketch Book). It’s been in my house for a few years. I bought it because its size fascinated me. 600 pages of 10 ¾ x 12 ½ high-quality paper. The darned thing intimated me so much that I couldn’t work up the courage to put anything in it.
I decided to collage some bits onto the pages to make them not so intimidatingly full of wide-open white space. And then started writing around and on the collaged bits.
Things will continue to make it there (me, looking sideways at the small journal where I’ve been keeping a casual collection of things). And more and more things will end up there as I start using it as a repository for the things in my mind that need a palace.
Mine isn’t a true commonplace journal – as it will be a bit of a personal journal and a bit of a mixed-media art journal. I do my intense personal journaling elsewhere and plan to use my commonplace journal to capture the emotions of the moments in bytes. Not as self-examination in the moment as I might use a standard journal for – rather, for a glimpse into my now, which might interest future-me.
I will end with my favorite quote about commonplace journals from writer Charley Locke. She perfectly describes how a commonplace journal is not a dear-diary kind of journal.
It’s an admittedly different approach from my generation’s inclination toward full-frontal accountability. Daily diary apps and self-improvement podcasts and confessional Instagram stories evince a belief that to grow as a person you have to be entirely, unflinchingly forthcoming. But I couldn’t catalog my flaws without flinching. And I don’t think I need to. That’s part of the point of reading, I think: When I find myself too earnest, too impatient, too much, I can be in conversation with other minds instead. Keeping a commonplace book feels like a kinder way to grow, by wrestling with the articulations of others in the open as I hopefully adjust myself within.
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