Tuesday, March 13, 2018

SpeechCraft: Journal Writing

I am taking the Toastmasters SpeechCraft Course, Monday evenings at Mount Roskill Grammar.

Our homework was to prepare for a speech on something that you are passionate about. So I wrote about Journal Writing. I had myself video recorded while I was delivering the speech. I was very nervous. I simply read my speech and they said that I had very good facial expressions. They were entertained and liked how I delivered the speech. Here's my speech:

It started as an exercise in school. We had to write a journal entry at least once a week as part of our English subject. Here we practiced our wow words and built on our vocabulary. It wasn’t easy to think of something to write when you’re in primary. I had to be on a lookout for exciting things and write about it the next day.
8th July 1985
The best part of yesterday was when I eat Max’s pizza
and it was yummy and super duper yummy
and I was thinking… there is salt BUT there was no salt in the pizza
because pizza makers don’t put salt.

This was me writing back in the day. I wrote about things that made me happy. I was 8!
In high school, the focus for journal writing was length. It had to be X number of words per entry. The grammar should be right. OF COURSE I filtered my SCHOOL journal entries BECAUSE… I also kept a journal for myself.
23 August 1993
It's  fifteen days before I turn sixteen. I've been looking forward to being sixteen for a long time, but you know that right? It was always, in my mind, the real age when you stop being referred to as a child and start to grow towards adulthood. I always thought I'd do more after I turned sixteen. But honestly, I think it won't change anything.

A couple of years later, already an adult, I discovered Blogging. So I setup my blog, that’s a page on the internet and used it for journal writing.
24 September 2007
Speaking of, on our journey through life, we really should take only what we can't live without. Otherwise, those that are truly precious will only get mixed up with the non-essential things and if we don't figure out what we really need soon, the precious ones might just disappear in the clutter.

I wrote this after doing some shopping to prepare for a trip overseas. Now, that’s quite an insight.
Journaling is a beautiful and powerful facilitator of self-discovery. It reveals and tracks patterns and cycles. It HAS become a powerful habit which helped me develop a sense of self-awareness.
In the words of Anne Lister "What a comfort is this journal. I tell myself to myself and throw the burden on my book and feel relieved."
Do you keep a journal?

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