This will likely change a bit as I actually write answers, but my year in review will be based on the following questions, skipping any that I turn out not to have answers for:

General: Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? What dates stand out from the year? What did you do this year that you’d never done before? What will you always associate with this year (such as a song or activity)? Where did most of your time go? Where did most of your money go?

Friends and family: Who was in your life a lot this year? What influence did they have? Who did you meet, reconnect with or get closer to this year? Who did you drift from this year? Any births, moves, or career changes in your circle? Any illnesses, injuries, or deaths in your circle? For both of those, who was it, and how did it affect you?

Infatuations and themes: What were you really into this year? What did you really look forward to, or were thrilled with after it happened? What styles or ideas pervaded your year? What were your routines?

Successes: What was your biggest achievement of the year? When did someone thrill or impress you, or go above and beyond (“someone” could be you)? What did you want and get? What was the best thing you bought this year? What did you improve at this year? What did you maintain this year? Was that easy or a struggle, and do you want to improve it?

Failures: What was your biggest failure of the year? What did you learn from it? When did someone hurt or disappoint you (“someone” could be you)? What did you want and not get? What did you hope to improve at this year but didn’t?

Hobbies and social activities: What new (or nearly new) activities did you try? Which ones did you stop doing? Anything learned from that? Would you try any of them again? Which new activities did you continue? What do they bring to you? What ongoing/pre-existing activities and relationships were at high or low tide this year? What pre-existing activities or relationships did you let go of? What did that open you up for?

Other experiences: Where did you travel – cities, states, countries? What books did you read this year? What movies and TV shows did you watch this year? What live performances did you see this year? For each of the previous 3 questions, which ones stand out? What else did you listen to or read this year (podcasts, recorded music, blogs, webcomics, videos)? Any new discoveries?

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1. Memories that come to you
2. Phrases that get stuck in your head
3. Quotations that strike you
4. Reactions to things you read, watch, or listen to
5. Interesting ideas, words, or phrases
6. Trivia that is fun or intriguing
7. Things you appreciate as particularly witty or clever

I do all of these to some degree, but in particular I take notes from my nonfiction reading in my journal, sometimes extensively. I’ve recorded particularly clever cryptic crossword puzzle clues, words for things I didn’t know there was a word for, and little bits about people I have just learned about and might want to look up later. Phrases and quotations often end up in my mini art journal.

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1. What’s the worst that could happen? Seriously. How would you cope? Is there anything you could do differently from the start to mitigate the problems while still making the same decision? [This is also a good approach for dealing with non-decision situations you are worried about.]
2. What might you regret about not choosing this option?
3. What might be the long-term benefits of choosing this option – one, five, ten years out?
4. Put 1, 2, and 3 together: If I choose this option, the risk is X, but I could gain Y, and if I do not choose this option I would regret Z. Try to be concise but get at the heart of it; once you’ve made a sentence for all the options you can use them to help you compare.
5. Put yourself in the future, after the dust has settled. Explain to someone why you chose this option (and if this option is to do nothing, imagine it has come out that you came close to acting and you are explaining why you did not). Be brief, but write various versions. Do they feel true to you? Do they rely on something happening that hasn’t yet in order to feel true?

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1. Your tombstone inscription.
2. Your obituary.
3. A eulogy given at your funeral.
4. A reminiscence of you by someone five years after your death.
5. A speech given because something is being named after you.

For the last one think broadly. Many things can be named after someone: a room, building, or park; a library endowment, scholarship, prize, or event; an organization or job title; a species or breed, mineral, celestial body, or scientific principle. What would you want to have named for you? What would make you feel especially seen and appreciated?

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There is a dizzying array available – if you run out of options in the bookstores, check Etsy. You can also buy decks of affirmation cards, inspiration cards, insight cards, and blessing cards, the extended family of oracle cards.

In June, I started the habit of drawing an oracle card each evening, reading its description in the book that generally comes with the deck, and thinking about it while going through a basic stretching routine. Sometimes that leads to a journal entry or an addition to my mini art journal; more often it does not, but even the least-applicable card gives me enough to think about that I stretch a bit longer than I would otherwise.

You can, of course, use oracle cards as journal prompts explicitly. Draw a card, and answer any or all of these questions:

1. Before you read the description, what does the card make you think of?
2. How well does the description correspond to the card? Where do you see the two especially well matched or especially discordant from each other?
3. Where could the message of the card apply to your life? How can you maneuver it into fitting some aspect of your life, if it doesn’t seem to as written?
4. In your life, is there an abundance of or a need for the elements outlined in the card? If the message is one of advice or divination, can you argue both in support of the message and against the message?

For a few weeks after getting into using oracle cards, I came up with a flood of card and deck ideas of my own. For a while I thought “This is my medium!” It slowed, though, and completing a good oracle deck is a lot of work – a lot of cards must be chosen and designed, and the descriptions must be drafted and reworked. However, you can make test cards or simple decks really quickly and easily. (And I am still working toward some completed oracle decks of my own.)

The easiest way to make your own cards is with blank index cards. You can use 4″ x 6″ cards for a large deck (though with index cards this size feels a little flimsy), cut the cards down – I’ve cut them into halves, quarters, even eighths! – or use cards that are already smaller. 3″ x 5″ index cards would be a reasonable size for a deck of oracle cards. Decorate one side of the cards to be the back – the techniques I listed for simple art journaling could all apply here. Typically you would want the backs to all match, but for test cards I have only been making them match thematically. I have a set that are (almost) all watercolor crayon resist, and a set that are all just filled in with colored pencil, and two sets that are watercolor-only. If you’re cutting apart large index cards, you can decorate a lot of backs in a short amount of time.

If you paint, the paper will probably get a little bumpy. Let it dry for 24 hours and then iron it, no steam, with a piece of blank paper between the paint and the iron. I found that even 24 hours later there was still a good amount of wet paint hiding in there to come off on the paper! I’m going to reuse my pressing sheets until I think of some way to use them as art in their own right.

So far I have handwritten the fronts of the cards, but my printer can print onto 4″ x 6″ paper, so I’ve got the option to print them. I have ideas for sturdier cards once my decks are more finished – the heaviest cardstock my printer can manage, and then cut it down into cards. I believe you could get 4 “full-sized” cards out of one sheet of letter-sized cardstock, or 6 small-but-not-mini cards (oracle decks are usually significantly larger than playing cards, but not always and it’s certainly not a requirement). I even have corner-rounding punches to make them nice and fancy. That process is a good while in the future, though!

Decks shown in photos:
First photo, left: Animal Kin Oracle by Sarah Wilder
First photo, right: Journey of Love Oracle, by Alana Fairchild (card meanings), Rassouli (card art), and Richard Cohn (poetry included in guidebook)
Second photo, left: Oracle of Mystical Moments, by Catrin Well-Stein
Second photo, right: Oracle of Visions, by Ciro Marchetti

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1. Dreams or the impression/mood you woke up with – it can color your day even if you forget it right away.
2. Daydreams – they can be keys to understanding what you really want or need and what is missing in your life, or simply a window into how you are feeling (does stress make your daydreams turn into daymares?)
3. Overall mood of the day.
4. When others who play a major role in your life are especially happy or upset.
5. Significant decisions – what was the context, what factors seemed most important, what decision did you make and what outcomes do you expect? Come back in six months or a year and see how you did.
6. Gut feelings – did you follow them or go against them? Come back later and find out whether you should trust your gut more in certain areas or whether on some topics it’s actually your anxieties in disguise.
7. Times you experience surprise, in particular if it’s because of others’ reactions to something – could it be your expectations need tuning?
8. Feelings of especial happiness, pride, or fulfillment.
9. Times you realize you’ve been completely engrossed in an activity.
10. First impressions, especially if someone makes a great first impression – what was it about them?
11. Times you have a negative reaction to someone else’s actions, especially if they would be surprised that you had reacted negatively. This is to look back at for patterns, to figure out what is actually bothering you and either learn how to not be bothered by it, or be able to ask for different behavior from the other person specifically and with a reason.

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1. Prepare descriptions of your work, hobbies, and family/living situation that are suitable for any audience. (Clearly only the parts you’d be interested in discussing!)
2. Write about what kind of first impression you’d like to make. What would you like someone to say about you after the occasion? “That person seemed ___.” What attitude and actions would convey that impression?
3. Find a list online of conversation openers and prepare answers to them as you would for potential interview questions. Which such questions would you feel comfortable using? Can you come up with others?
4. If you are anticipating a specific event: Write about your relationship to the event. How are you connected to the host(s) or to other expected guests; have you been to past editions of the event or comparable other events? Do you know any related trivia that others might find interesting?

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First up, faceted life story. Write your life story through the lens of:

1. Religion & Spirituality: [Here I use the word “religion” as a shorthand for all varieties of spiritual practice.] How were you raised and what relationship did you have to religion as a child? How did your experience and relationship change over time? Are there any particular events that deepened or distanced your relationship to your childhood religion? To a new adopted religion? What has kept your belief strong, or what brought you back if you spent time away, or what prompted the change to a new religion or to no religion? How has the whole process felt? Is there anything from a past religion you miss?
2. Education & Career: What did you expect to do for a living when you were a child? What was your experience of and relationship to school? How did your career plans change as you grew into young adulthood? Did they change your relationship to school? Did your plans when you finished high school turn out? Your plans at 21? At 25? If not, was the change something you wanted or was it due to things not working out as you hoped? What has happened in your career and education since? Is there still something you’d like to do and haven’t yet?
3. Relationship & Family: As a child, how did you envision your adult romantic and family life? Big wedding, small wedding, no wedding; lots of kids, few kids, no kids? Tight ties to siblings and other family members or a separate life elsewhere? How did it come to pass? Did you find a discrepancy between what you thought you wanted and what you actually wanted, and if so how did you find it? Is there anything you wanted as a child and haven’t gotten, but still want?

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I’ve kept adding roughly a page a week to the notebook. Here are some materials and techniques that I’ve used:

1. Magazine, catalog, and other clippings – the cover of my tiny notebook is actually out of a credit card offer, and the ampersand in the photo below is out of a newsletter from my health insurance company.
2. Printouts from the internet – sometimes I look up a specific image that I want (since I’m unlikely to draw it to my satisfaction!), and sometimes an image crosses my path that’s worth hanging on to.
3. Stickers – I especially like letter stickers because I have limited skills with hand-lettering, but any stickers with suitable symbols or messages are welcome.
4. Crayon resist watercolor – write a message in light-colored crayon (assuming you’re using white paper), and then paint over it with very wet watercolor. Makes a mess of neighboring pages but a really nice effect; slide waxed paper underneath the page you’re painting to protect the next ones down. If you can go really wet, put drops of paint onto wet paper and the crayon marks will (imperfectly) contain them as they spread. The photo below is that effect, done on index cards.
5. Sharpie with colored pencil background – the permanent marker will lay down enough color that you can color in the background afterward with just about any colors and still be able to read it.
6. “Crayon resist markers” – this doesn’t really work the same way as with paint, but you can write with crayon and color over it with markers and get a somewhat similar effect.
7. Just writing, but with colorful pens – I have a set of gel pens I’m mildly obsessed with (Pilot G-2 Metallics), so sometimes I just write whatever it is I’m recording with them.
8. Marked-up writing – however your message is recorded, you can underline, circle, put arrows to, or otherwise highlight the key words with doodling.

I keep some newspaper and waxed paper with my art supplies to protect neighboring pages and my desk from my various experiments. None of my art supplies are “artist quality”; most are Crayola products aimed at grade schoolers.

I think my problem before was two pieces: overly high expectations for what I could/should produce, and expecting to just know what to put into the art journal. You see pictures online of people who art journal extensively and they appear to fill two facing pages of a large sketchbook every day with renditions of the thoughts and events of their lives — that’s not going to be me, and I should recognize that! Two-dimensional art has never been my medium, and I’m not going to suddenly know how to draw or paint by magic; I’ve also never maintained a diary for more than two months at a time, so why would it suddenly be easier to maintain one that requires a lot more effort?

For me, art journaling is more about making things that stand out in my mind also stand out on paper – and I don’t have two pages a day of that kind of content.

In fact, for a long time I had very little of that content. I have found, however, that adding “non-art” journaling to my life – which is still not diary-style, and about which more in future posts – has created the contents to put into the art journal. Funny, that – taking time specifically to think about my life has allowed me to articulate the things I want to remind myself of. Kind of a big duh but it was only clear to me in hindsight!

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