I am a husband, writer, and teacher exploring what it means to cultivate mental silence.

Week Five with the Theme System Journal...

This week I’m going to focus on things I have noticed since being more “organic” with my choice of where to spend time writing about the categories I’m using in the journal section of the Theme System Journal. Last week I decided not to stick with the “dedicated” spaces I’d placed “Good,” “Rant,” “Proud,” and “Forward” in when writing at the end of the day. The following image reveals some interesting things and gets me wondering about something...The left-hand page has the categories in their “traditional” spaces. The right-hand page sees me switching things up...just a bit. I placed “Rant” at the bottom because that particular rant did not need as much space as others. I moved “Forward” to the top that day as well. “Good,” and “Proud” where flipped...for lack of a better term. The rest of the week saw “Proud,” and “Good” take on the middle two spaces, “Forward,” and “Rant” taking the top and bottom spaces. “Rant” went to its original space one time. I also noticed that “Rant” was the category I started with each night and on one night...my rant led to something I was proud of...which was related to the rant. So...what am I to make of all of this?

  1. “Rant” seems to be a category that needs to stay in the rotation.
  2. Sometimes the categories will be related to one another.
  3. Being more “organic” with the placement of the categories is pretty much contingent on where I decide to start/place the first category when I sit to write.

As I come to the conclusion of this reflection I’m wondering what might come of me spending some time brainstorming additional categories to write about...creating a bank of them...to insert into my daily practice as I decide nightly that one or more of the “original” categories needs to be replaced. For example...”Surprised” might be an interesting one to play with. More on that next week!

Week Six with the Theme System Journal...

Week Four with the Theme System Journal...