Sitting in a Scandinavian cafe for a third day in a row, on a bench that should be horribly uncomfortable, yet somehow it provides a perfect lounging spot. Trying to understand the barista made me question if I'll ever understand Spanish properly: despite my best efforts, he gave up as I tried to compliment the eclectic mix of Simply Red, Black Sabbath and Paco de Lucia. Like the bench, it shouldn't have made sense, but it somehow did.

This was a note from my journal entry from my trip to Madrid. I've been journaling (mostly) regularly since at least 2009. At first, it was simply to track my training, but it soon spiralled out of control. It hit its peak in 2017 when I re-acquired a camera. Since then, my journals have become a glorious mess of feelings, observations, ideas and random notes. A brain dump, and a way to process the world around me.

The connection between my journals and photography never really clicked with me until this trip. This was the first time I've actually seen the connection however vague and underdeveloped it was. But what got me thinking about it in a more structured way were the rants by Dan Milnor and a talk Sean gave in London some time back.

Milnor's rant focused on developing ideas and experiences and letting the observations inform the photography projects. He goes to great lengths to make these journals a part of a project (he even designs his own notebooks with photos and even drafts text from his previous trips). This sounds like a bit of a gimmick, and most certainly a way to sell blurb notebooks, but I found the underlying principle does work. Something that tied my trip to Madrid together was music: I kept finding it everywhere. And subconsciously wrote about various sound-related things in my journal: whether it was harp music in front of the royal palaces, birds in the Retiro, or eclectic music mixes in the odd cafes mentioned above. And it (just) started to show in my photography as well. From photos of the musicians to finding patterns in the way walking in the park resonated with my heartbeats to researching the history of Spanish music.

Sean, on the other hand, spoke about a journaling method often referred to as "the morning pages" (a phrase originally coined by Julia Cameron in "The Artist's Way"), which is less about thorough observation and more about the unconscious processing of emotions. The point of the morning pages is to write three pages of "stream of consciousness" thoughts the first thing in the morning and to use them to process internal feelings, emotions, and inspiration in a "liminal space of the mind". For the last few years, I found myself floating in and out of the habit of doing this -- it often was useful, but rarely sparked anything that lived on photographically. If you don't count an urge to shoot a particular image or to try out a particular piece of gear. That said, the theme of music, sounds, and spoken word floated quite a few times in my writings for the past few months. This made me think there might be a method to this madness; something I might explore more in future writing and projects.

There is no such thing as the best journaling method. If anything, I'd say these two are complementary. At least I found them to be.

Both of these journaling approaches depend on the reading I've done, my state of mind, and the happenings in my daily life. As my day job is not directly related to photography (even if I do consider it to be creative), more often than not my journals never have anything to do with photography in the first place. But sometimes, like in the example above, I feel like they have the power to inspire it. Or maybe even guide it.

So what about you? Do you journal? If so, do you find it useful to your creative pursuits?