FIFTY-TWO WEEKS

Since we're at the start of a new year and whatnot, I've been toying with the idea of doing some sort of a 2013 project. I love the idea of doing a 365 photo project or something but have a very strong feeling I'd forget and miss days more often than I'd remember. I've thus been more open for some sort of week based 52 project. And as I've been spending a fair amount of time lying in bed and recovering lately and while doing so I've also been spending a fair amount of time on my laptop browsing the wonderful World Wide Web. The Internet is so inspiring. More specifically, I've been particularly enjoying this blog and this blog, and was particularly inspired by this journal project.

I used to write lots of journals when I was younger, documenting my days and my life and moving to new countries and I like looking back at them. When I first moved to the States, I started writing my journal in English in a concious effort to practice the language. When I lived in the Middle East and 9/11 happened or the war broke out in 2003. I wrote about these things too and it's strange how things I was writing about seemed completely normal then, but a bit out of the ordinary now. For example how we were given a leaflet in school showing us how gas masks worked and an evacuation plan in case of emergency (which had a brilliant map with a rectangle representing our school, and a dotted line leading from the school to a "?" representing the evacuation plan. Anyone else remember this? Wish I kept it!).

It's been years and years since I last kept a journal now though, mainly because I couldn't find the time and my entries ended up being too irregular for my liking. This time around, I plan on making it far more visual, using lots of pictures in stead of text. I use my phone every single day to take pictures, and I plan on using a lot of them, as well as pictures I've taken with film and gotten developed, and other random things like cinema tickets, etc. And in stead of my old massive paragraphs detailing everything that happened that day, I want to try to just remember one little particular thing that happened on that day that I particularly enjoyed, emphasizing positive thinking. It will also be on a weekly basis, making it more of a routine thing, but not a routine that's too time demanding. I also like how I'll be able to work in retrospect, in case I end up becoming too busy (though I hope it won't happen too often!).

For my 52 WEEKS project, I'm using a moleskin journal (that I actually accidentally stole from Graeme), which I've just covered in some craft paper as I plan on doing something with the cover later. It's got one of those elastic straps that holds it together, which will probably be very useful as I'll be adding lots of pages to it and it'll probably end up being huge by the time I'm done. I also plan on using some of the quotes Elise uses in her project, which she's made available to download here. Other than that I just plan on using whatever I have around and I'm leaving the rules pretty relaxed, as I can see my format ending up changing as I go along and get more of a feel for the project.