As a kid, I never really liked writing in a journal. It seemed silly: I knew what I did for the day, why would I need to write it down? So I quit doing it.
Years later, I realized I have always been keeping a journal, just in a format that most people wouldn’t recognize. I keep notebooks of my drawings, ideas, and even basic arithmetic for whatever project or chore I’m doing. I find that keeping these notebooks has fulfilled the sort of “personal life introspection" that my mother claimed a journal would always give me, in a way that doesn’t require reading the haphazard and structurally unsound writings of younger me.
So this is every image in the progression of my first notebook I deemed fit for general release. This is a peek into my daily life, so note that not every page is going to be an interesting doodle.
When I originally posted this on Tumblr, I struggled with whether or not to leave the blank pages intact, but ultimately decided to trim all but one. I’m still not sure if I regret that decision, whether it was better to seek a more interesting narrative or be fully honest with the presentation. Ultimately, I felt that the protracted distribution of the images would leave most people picking it up somewhere in the middle, being referenced by other people picking out the interesting bits, so the fullness of the experience would be missing either way. Here on Behance, however, you are receiving the full range of pages. I have left all blank pages in, to provide a complete sense of the flow of the notebook.
Anyway, this is Notebook #1. I hope you find something within its pages to encourage you to do the same.
