Hello micro-journallers and listers!

How did your February prompt cycles go? What have you learned about yourself? I decided to do a bit of a review of some of my lists and prompts from January and February to see if there were any patterns of behaviour or thoughts that might be stopping me from moving forward with anything in my life. It occurred to me that I haven’t actually explained how these journalling prompts could help with reflection, personal development and memory keeping.

I started the prompts on a whim, and the fact that I couldn’t sleep one morning. The original prompt cycle was written at 4 in the morning, after some internet trawling of journalling prompts on Pinterest. I realised that there were just so many prompts out there, each one different from the last one, and I could see merit in it because you could track different memories and aspects of your day and respond to different prompts to keep your journal/memory keeping fresh and alive. But I am a creature of habit, and I am a keen observer of behaviour (mine and others), so I thought, heck why not use the same core journalling prompts each month and rotate the order that you answer them. I thought to myself, “Dee, you’re either a freaken genius or the insomnia is making you delusional!”

It’s been four months since I started the original prompt cycle (the lists version was something I started in January) and I thought it was about time that I did a bit of a review of some of the responses to the prompts. So I chose two prompts (12 and 13) from the original prompt cycle which I absolutely love answering each month. Prompt 12 is “describe your morning” and Prompt 13 is “describe your evening”. I’m not using pictures from my logbook for these examples because there is sensitive information there that are for my eyes only, so typed out versions will have to suffice (I’m sure you’ll understand).

PROMPT 12: Describe your morning

FRI 27 Nov: Same old, same old. Up at the crack of shit to get to work in a rush. Coffee run and brekkie during the drive to work. Thank fuck it’s Friday!

WED 23 Dec: M sprayed round-up weed killer and we almost died from the smell. Left the house for a few hours to avoid potential neighbour complaints. Oops! Finally got some errands done!

THU 7 Jan: Went back to the baby store and spent a small fortune.

SAT 20 Feb: Some quick household chores after brekkie and coffee before heading out to our last antenatal class.

PROMPT 13: Describe your evening

SUN 1 Nov: Struggled through chronic headaches due to pregnancy hormones. Made lemongrass pork rice paper rolls for dinner. Caught up on ‘Limitless’ episodes. Wrote and uploaded ‘Daily Logbook Prompt Cycle’ on blog and Instagram – not bad for two hours worth of brainstorming at four in the morning.

FRI 4 Dec: Chilled the fuck out. The end.

WED 27 Jan: Mum and little brother came over in the evening for a quick catch-up and goji berry delivery :)

TUE 16 Feb: Pilates then working from home… again. I have to stop the long hours, I started at 7am today and it’s nearly 10pm…

I had these questions in mind when I reviewed my responses:

• Are there any clear patterns of behaviour I seem to be exhibiting? Yes, I seem to be always glad that it’s Friday regardless of whether it’s morning or evening haha Mornings seem to be more productive hours of the day than the night time when not a lot of things happen.
• What emotions and other memories have these responses conjured up? Heaps of memories around the house and of course the little bun in the tum, especially around December and January, when hubby and I were both on holidays. It was stressful times but when I look back on it, we really enjoyed yourselves – moving into our own space, creating a new space for our daughter, spending some quality time together, and sharing all of these with family and friends.
• Are there any ridiculously obvious signs or behaviours that I need to pay more attention to and address? I think work has been a big stressor since the end of last year and going into this year. I’m now on part-time hours but seem to be working just as long, if not more trying to fit everything in. I need to re-evaluate, re-prioritise and say ‘no’ more often than I already am.

So that’s just one way of reviewing your responses. There are some questions that resonate a lot stronger with me than others, so I also found that I would write more for these. I would love to get your feedback about the prompt cycles, so here’s a little survey I’ve made for a little bit of your time :)

 

The March and April daily prompt cycle. If you want to share any of your examples on Instagram, here’s the hashtag #d30promptcycle

• March April 2016 Prompt Cycle
• March April 2016 Prompt Cycle Small version

The March and April daily lists prompt cycle. If you want to share any of your examples on Instagram, here’s the hashtag #d30lists

• March April 2016 Lists Cycle Calendar
• March April 2016 Lists Cycle Calendar Small version

The next installment will be available on April 30 for the May and June prompts. Just a heads up, I may be a bit busy with a little one during this time, so I hope you understand if I don’t answer your emails and comments straight away. Also don’t forget to complete my little survey about the prompt cycles, if you have a few minutes. Thanks! Happy micro-journalling and listing!

dq

Hello, listing enthusiasts! How did your January listing go? I was super excited about this micro-journalling exercise because I found that I was having less and less time to capture bits of my day. I decided to use a super small Daiso grid notebook I bought many months ago as my choice of capturing my lists. It was a bit of an accident starting it here. I was actually waiting for Hubby to finish at the gym and I had arrived early. I was growing a bit frustrated with how much time I’d spent trawling social media and how much time I wasted doing this. I was going through a phase where I was finding it really hard to find time to do more creative things, and social media and inane internet websites are what were taking up most of that time. So I decided to just whip out this small notebook and started filling in these waiting time gaps with things that I love. I had every intention of transferring these pages to another book at home, but I found that this was just far too convenient and takes me less than 5 minutes each day (except for one prompt).

So these are the last entries of January for me:

Below is the daily lists prompt cycle for February in calendar formats

• Feb 2016 Lists Cycle Calendar
• Feb 2016 Lists Cycle Calendar SMALL version

From March onwards, I’ll be uploading each LISTS prompt cycle for every two months along with the Daily Prompt Cycle (the original prompt cycle questions). This is mainly to prepare for the little one that’s about to arrive in our life, but check my Instagram account for some updates along the way.

If you’ve missed the original Daily Prompt Cycles for January and February, here are the calendar formats:

• Jan and Feb 2016 Daily Prompt Cycle Small version
• Jan and Feb 2016 Daily Prompt Cycle Calendar

I’d love to hear your comments and feedback about the Lists Cycle, so don’t be shy, send me an email, comment below, or stalk my Instagram account (@decadethirty). Happy listing!

dq