Context Tags & Journaling

For about a month surrounding our move, I was a horrible, horrible, no good journaler.
Which was fine, as things were very busy and the time to just sit and write wasn't afforded me, but it doesn't do too well for helping to have a clear mind. And that is something very important to me feeling functional. If I go too long without journaling, things just kind of...pile up and tumble about my head and clutter up the place. Which is not optimal.

At the beginning of July, I set to rectify this. Which, so far as I can tell, has turned out incredibly well.
It even started with me mentioning that I need to be writing more, as these things tend to.

Brilliant me decided that I needed a brand new insert for one of my fauxdoris, so to the printer I went for some dot grid paper. Of course, my settings were screwed up, so the dimensions aren't 100%, but it worked, and pen to paper I went.

From the 9th of July until now, I have written in it every single day. And for me, doing something every day for that long is an immense success. I'm not really sure how it's worked out that way, but it has and I will not be complaining about it!

Either way, I am quite enjoying what I have concocted. It wasn't contrived to be anything in particular, but it has turned into the most effortless form of journaling I have ever tried:
Context tags.
Which sounds a little weird. But it has helped so very much so far as getting things out of my head.

I'm used to writing whatever came to mind, who cares if thoughts ran into others and meshed in with other subjects. That was fine, that was how it was supposed to work. Except, apparently, I was wrong for a very long time!

What has ended up happening is something a bit confusing to explain, especially since it was never planned - it just sort of happened.
The first two or three days, was just bullet points of notes and things I needed out of my head. Then it grew into wanting to write a tid-bit about a subject, so the bullet point started with the subject. And then it stayed that way.
Simple as that.

• When it was Comic Con time, and the Star Wars footage was released, I had a "Star Wars" bullet point about how awesome the video was, how the Millennium Falcon cockpit is moving around for filming (practical effects, I think they call it), and how ridiculously excited I am to see Episode 7. 
• A few days later, when I was watching "American Psycho" and thought it was funny with the business cards and how they never actually go into what they do for work, and the "murders and executions" bit, I had a few bullet points started with "American Psycho", as that was the subject matter. 
• I've been having more dreams lately, so I've got lots of "Dreams" bullet points. 
• I've been doing weird things to my planning system, so I've a ton of bullet points of "Planning" and whatnot. 
• I've also been writing about my jaw and teeth problems, so lots of various bullet points titled either "teeth pain" or "jaw pain". 

I absolutely love it.
For one, it's organized. If I need to refer back to something, skimming back to find it is super simple, as everything is labeled.
For two, it helps me formulate things into a coherent thought. With the sort of "normal" journaling, I would miss things I felt that needed to be written down, when my writing would take a different turn to go along with the thought of the time. Now, I'm able to do both, so long as I finish one thought and come back to the second when the first is complete.
For three, it hasn't taken away the bit of stream of conciousness thing I normally had going on - writing about whatever came to mind when it did. It's just now labeled with something instead of a huge page of text with no signifiers of any kind.
For four, no more scatter brain.

I don't worry about making sure that each time I write about a certain subject, it gets the same title, I just use whichever term sounds the best at the time. It helps to not lose the thought, but also to put my headspace into realizing that this is the subject we need to be focusing on for the next few minutes. And if something terribly important comes to mind while I'm in the middle of writing about something else, there's always sticky notes.

It's been going fabulously. So much more writing has been getting done, and so much more mental processing versus trying to sort through things before they flutter away.

~Havok

And, if you are interested in hearing post-headache rambles about this system, there's a video! Because it made sense to film one (at the time - I have doubts now!)