Blog 2025/3
Writing up my 2025 diary

You could go out and buy a diary from the stationers. Most people do, but as I am a bookbinder, I do like to make mine myself.

For me, a hand/home-made diary becomes more personal. I am far more likely to treat it with respect and use it properly, which I just haven’t done with shop-bought versions, but you need to do whatever works best for you.

In addition, I design the pages I want to use and print them all out at home, so I get exactly what I need and don’t have to work around someone else’s design. If this is something that interests you, I will cover making journals later in the year, but for now this is about getting ready to face this year.

In the previous blog, I talked about how I plan. All that information which I produced on a spreadsheet is now handwritten into my diary. But my diary also contains a couple of pages each week which I find really useful.

Every day I write down three gratuities. These are three things which happened that day and for which I am genuinely grateful. It could be something as simple as watching the birds in my garden, it could be how thankful I am for a roof over my head, or it could be an interaction with someone which has made my day better.       

I also have a page which I call “brain dump”. I sometimes use this page to get something negative off my chest but of late I use it more and more to manifest positive things in my life.

There is a lot of talk these days about how our thoughts and desires can be used to create a life which we want. I am no expert on this subject by any means but this time last year I finally decided that I wanted to have my artwork in galleries. I had resisted it for many, many years. I got over myself and asked for gallery representation and I was in three galleries in 2024.

If that all sounds a bit airy fairy to you, I asked for other things too. I wanted to increase sales of my artwork and did. I asked for wealth to flow into my life, and it did. I asked recently for help with expanding my social media presence and I was invited, out of the blue, to join an American-based support group (I am the only non-US member) by a woman who has been extremely successful in her business and has a small mentorship group of 20 people who support each other.

So as far as I am concerned it works for me and that is all contained within the journal/diary I make every year.