Simple …
is a good fallback plan.
I have been researching options for ‘next’. This year I have been using a daily journal from poet Donna Ashworth as a writing and reflection tool, enjoying the thoughtful prompts, spaces to contemplate, and her poetry sprinkled throughout. As the pages left dwindle, I have turned my mind to what next year’s daily practice could be.
There are many options to be found deep in the delightful rabbit warren of journals and similar. Many seem too rigid, complicated or just too much.
Faced with this dilemma, I usually ask the question:
What is a simple solution?
Simple is often overlooked because it seems too … simple: prosaic or uninspired.
Yet simple is sometimes precisely what we need.
My simple fallback plan to follow on my year of prompted journalling is to use artist Lynda Barry’s Daily Diary idea from her book Syllabus. A simple exercise in taking notice and grounding myself in the present it involves recording what I do, what I see and what I hear each day. As a hat tip to the artist in each of us, it also includes a quick doodle of something we see that day.
And, whilst I may be tempted to go searching for the perfect notebook, the simple solution is sitting here on my shelf ready.
That sounds simple, and good, to me.
I’m curious, when it all gets too difficult, how might you fallback on the simple solution?