All About YOU: Journaling Ideas and Inspiration

Journaling about yourself on a layout can be intimidating – where do you start? What might your children or other family members and friends want to know about you? Even if you want to record your life, the mere label “all about me” is overwhelming. It can mean anything from deep, introspective self-examination to a light-hearted list of favorites, and everything in between. To spark some fresh ideas for all-about-me pages, I’ve gathered up a list of resources that collectively give you hundreds of journal prompts, everything from describing your birth to “housework and me” to listing the contents of your purse! Also, I encourage you to check out your favorite store’s challenges because many offer some sort of journaling/all-about-me challenge to get you inspired and scrapping yourself.

Get Prompted:  Creativewriting-prompts.com offers an excellent list of prompts that start with the basics – your full name, place and description of birth, etc. – and include ideas for self-affirming statements such as “I can…” and “I deserve…” I love these positive affirmations: besides being great scrap therapy, they give your family a peek at your true feelings about yourself.

Journal in a Jar:  Although this post titled All About Me Journaling Prompts on Scrapjazz.com is several years old, the journal-jar idea is still around and still a fabulous one for kick-starting your creativity. In fact, you can buy this adorable hybrid journal jar project from The Tattered Pear with everything you need to get started.

Get your journal jar together then check out the Scrapjazz post for over 300 more specific and inspirational ideas for documenting every possible aspect of yourself. Here are a few of my favorites: What are the types of projects you procrastinate about? What’s your first reaction to a blank page or canvas? In your house, what are the predominant colors? There was a time when you almost gave up on something. Write about that experience. What did you do before we had the Internet? What is the last thing you did just to make yourself happy?

Describe Yourself Topically: This post, also from Scrapjazz.com, focuses more on overall page topics, perfect for a whole all-about-me album or whenever you need a little inspiration for a page. Here’s a sampling of topics:

• The Chef in Me (love it or hate it)
• Faith and Me
• Fears
• Housework and Me
• People that Inspire Me
• and over 30 more

Get Alphabetical: Do you have a blog or Facebook account? If so, then the “A to Z of Me” survey-type idea making its way around the blogosphere right now is perfect for you.   If you’re not into social media, use this idea for some nifty journaling on a layout. Plus, it’s fully customizable! Check out how Ashley, on her blog After Nine to Five, tweaks the list to make it fit her interests and preferences. This would make a fun “ABCs of Me” mini-album, too. You can use any list of words beginning with A-Z.

Inspired to get journaling?  I’ve gathered up a few journaling and me-themed products from around digiland to help you get started on your all-about-me pages.

	Getting Started: Journal Prompts by Sahlin Studio
{Me} kit by Valorie Wibbens and Designs by Lili
	To be continued word strips by Plum Dumpling Designs
Illuminated Journal 3: Wordart by ViVa Artistry
	Dear Diary kit by Little Butterfly Wings

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