I'm happy anywhere if I have a pencil and paper. I can easily get lost just drawing. I'd forgotten that. These pencil drawings of shells and foliage came from an old thick, almost bible-like moleskin with graph paper through out. I have diary entries and old tiny polaroids (I've heard they're starting to make them again!) stashed in there along with doilies, candy wrappers, ticket stubs from my favorite museum shows, and stickers. That's as sentimental as I get, it's more of an OCD record keeping, but it still grounds me in a weird way. Seeing this reminded me that I should begin carrying a journal/sketchbook with me again.

I used to journal quite a bit, writing a lot about my ideas for work, drawing cerebral things in pen and ink, while also just sketching the flotsam and jetsam of life. Keeping a journal has ebbed and flowed throughout my adult life. In the last several years I've done so, but only occasionally. Now it feels like I need to do it again with some regularity, there's something out there that needs discovered, or interestingly enough recovered again.

That's the great thing about journals, they root you, remind you where you've been, and can sometimes if you pay close attention, give clues to where you're going.