The Journal as Friend & Enemy
How Keeping a Journal can be a Resource
This essay is being published on both of my Substack channels. So you might get it twice, though under different titles. Why? Cause I think it has something unique for each of my audiences. If you don’t know what I’m referencing, I have two Substack newsletters, this one and the other one titled Photobooks of James Hazelwood.
The Journal as Friend & Enemy
“I’ll do anything to never journal again!” Her voice was defiant at the mere suggestion. “Ah,” I thought, “I’ve met another anti-journaler.” My friend Rick usually responds to the idea of journaling, “Just shoot me.” This oppositional journaling disorder, OJD, is not listed in the DSM-5 guidebook. That’s the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.
I understand. Writing your thoughts in a small notebook isn't for everyone and often brings to mind ‘Dear Diary” movie scenes. Usually, the focus of journal writing is on self-reflection and answering deep questions with poetic language about sunsets, rainbows, and unicorns.
That’s not how I approach using a journal, and specifically one focused on photography. Before I explain what, I do and don’t do, let me step back and give a quick overview of my journal habits and how two artists motivated me to get back to practicing.
Growing up in the southern California surf, music, and drug scene of the 1970s, I stumbled into writing about my intense adolescent struggles. I have no idea how it started. One theory is that an influential schoolteacher, Sylvia Vok, who became a close family friend, might have recommended it. Even in 5th grade, she liked my poetry. Don’t worry, the world is safe; none of that poetry exists, and if it did, it wouldn't be shared here. But I did write stories, ideas, tribulations in notebooks of various shapes and sizes.
During the COVID years, I unearthed a box of collectables and discovered these notebooks, journals, and travel logs.
Other items appeared in that box as well, including a collection of photographs from my time as a Program Director for our College radio station. Yes, I did meet and interview members of Genesis and the Little River Band (photos below) as well as Sting & the Police, David Johansen of the New York Dolls, a wide variety of LA Punk and New Wave bands of that time. To my knowledge, there are no surviving photographs of me attired in white platform shoes, matching polyester pants, and a purple and pink patterned silk shirt with the requisite gold chain.
But now I’ve gone way down memory lane and gotten off track—the journal thing, oh yeah. For over 50 years, I’ve intermittently written and pasted into books of various kinds. Many of these contain dreams I’ve had—both the nocturnal workings of the unconscious and the hopes and aspirations of the daytime. Sadly, I did not keep the practice during the more interesting years of our family life, such as the birth of our son, various moves, and career decisions.
In recent years, I’ve taken up journaling again. To be clear, my style tends to focus on a variety of topics, as seen in the excerpts below, which I’m typing out because my handwriting has become so terrible that only a professor of ancient hieroglyphics could read it. Here are a few samples.
November xx, 202x – Today was such a shitty day
April xx, 202x – Groceries to buy, berries, Jim’s cereal, Lisa’s cereal, milk, ½&1/2, eggs, those crackers we like in aisle 7, dinner, something, anything to drink. Stop at the liquor store.
August 10, 2020 – The Herman Leonard book jumped off the shelf this morning. I was putting away some dumb ass commentary on Ezekiel on the shelf above, and Leonard just said, “Look at me.” So I did, nearly two hours poring over his photographs. Mostly, Jazz artists in and around New Orleans in the 50s. By the time I reviewed that mammoth collection of his work, it was lunch time. What an artist! This evening, I learned he passed away 10 years ago on this date. I feel like a ghost paid a visit. Synchronicity is real!
Journal entries can range from the mundane to the mystical. But hey, isn’t that how we live our lives? Or as Joni Mitchell puts it in the song Hejira, “Each of us so deep and superficial, between the forceps and the stone.”
My recent plunge into the journal has been influenced by photographer, curator, and all-around bad boy Dan Milnor, Creative Guru at Blurb Books. His YouTube videos are part middle-aged Bro, part encouragement guru, combined with just straight talk about how to be an artist these days. About 4 years ago, I stumbled on this video of Dan talking about Journals and Photography.
Ah, I’d found a kindred spirit in journal making. Clearly, Dan is more prolific, creative, and possibly a bit OCD about his journal practice than I am. But the "bravo, go for it, screw the ‘right way’ to do it" attitude came right around the time I was resurrecting journaling. You can watch the video (click the photo) to see how Dan does it, but here are my rules and practices for doin’ the journal thing.
Journal Rules to Live and Die By
Do it on paper, not on a phone or a laptop. You can do your own thing, but the concrete makes the space-time continuum come alive. It doesn’t matter what book, pen, paper, etc, you use. I’ve tried many, and that’s just part of the fun.
Carry it with you, so you have it.
Write, paste, draw, glue, scribble, paint.
Put something in that journal every single moment you decide to. I’m not a write-every-day kind of guy. Others will love that discipline or self-persecution, but for me, this is something I’m doing because I want to, not because I have to.
Remember the most important rule of all. This is for you. You are not writing for your grandchildren to read one day, or for an audience; you are doing this as a solo project. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a dialogue in your writing. Sometimes I’m in conversation with other parts of myself, or with that Creative voice, or with God or an imaginary puppy. But you are doing this for you. Why is this important? Well, for me, I need a place to go where I can be honest, and if I start thinking about how someone will read my words, then I start dialing back on the vulnerability, self-disclosure, and passion. Worse, I might even start thinking about how to market the friggin thing — that’s really going to kill it. Write for you and you alone.
My journals these days hold the stuff I put in them, including ticket stubs, receipts, menu portions, and magazine tearings. Stickers—I’m really into stickers now. (Send me some stickers!) Usually, I tear out things and glue them in. Yes, a glue stick. The kind 5-year-olds use. I have about 20 of them because I keep forgetting to pack them, so I buy glue sticks in every country I visit. How do you say "glue stick" in Montenegrin?
My drawing skills suffer considerably, but who cares? These aren’t for show, except here, and even then, I’m not showing you the good stuff. Yes, that’s a Polaroid, got one of those puppies. Great for the journal thing, but not a convenient item to add to the luggage when traveling.
Finally, a word about my latest inspiration. The photographer Sally Mann released a new book titled Art Work: Living the Creative Life. Recently, my friend Peter Silvia and I attended her talk at RISD, and I’ve been reading this memoir, an honest, raw account of what it’s really like to live a creative life. She writes in journals, types, or writes old-fashioned letters (at least, she used to). Sally Mann gave me a gift I needed—a kind of reboot for my journaling.
So pick up a notebook, or don’t. But if you do, go for it. Slobber all over the thing, let your dog chew on it, and glue a receipt from the grocery store, and write about that idiot in front of you driving his shopping cart like he’s on weed. My point here is to get it out, express yourself in some way that feels like life, and art, and grace, and crap. Pour it onto the page.
Then maybe go for a walk in a cemetery and meditate on death and these great questions.
Who am I?
What do I love?
How shall I live, knowing I will die?
What is my gift to the family of this planet?
Something might happen…or not…do it anyway.
More to come,
James Hazelwood is a writer and photographer. Lately, he’s been fending off the mice sneaking into his Rhode Island home. His websites need work www.jameshazelwood.net and www.jameshazelwoodphoto.com
Reading this on my way to speak to students at art school about reflective writing, with journalling as key - neat synchronicity.
Thoughtful insights about journaling.