Dark Chocolate

Mari McCarthy's DARK CHOCOLATE FOR THE JOURNALER'S SOUL is exactly what it says it is....dark chocolate for the journaler.  Personally, I love to journal.  I've been doing it for so long, I have no real idea when I actually first started.  I have a large number of hand-written journals (notebooks, actual journals, notepads, etc.) that I've used over the years as well as digital journals I started in approximately 2009 or 2010.  I write in my journals A LOT.  A lot of journalers have been introduced to Julia Cameron's THE ARTIST'S WAY where she talks about doing Morning Pages--every day--3 full pages of freewriting that the journaler does first thing in the morning.

I have tried Morning Pages and liked them, very much.  The problem, though, is that I have never been much of a morning person.  I like to sleep until the last possible second.  So no matter how good my intentions, my Morning Pages typically were either Afternoon or Evening Pages instead.

In McCarthy's book, one of the contributors feels the same as I do about mornings and has taken to using Mari's suggestion of writing Night Notes instead.  While I've been reading through and working on a number of Mari's journals, blogs, etc., I had not yet heard or read about Night Notes.  But as soon as I read about them in DARK CHOCOLATE, I knew I'd hit on exactly what I was looking for as my alternative to Morning Pages--with no self-guilt!  (I felt guilty because I loved doing Morning Pages and I REALLY wanted to do them--I just didn't want to do them bad enough to get up a little earlier every day!) 

I am again inspired to get journaling.......