Nancy

1. I'm inspired to begin nature journaling because I want to make time to slow down and savor nature. I want to use it to express and illustrate my gratitude for the extraordinary and exquisite beauty of life and Earth. I hope journaling will help me deal with my hyper-awareness of, and grief over, global biodiversity loss by revealing opportunities for me to appreciate what is here on earth, for whatever period of time that may be. 2. I think all the journalers have a lot of great ideas. I want to record the location, time, and weather as some of the journalers have done. I also want to include my written observations, and I want to use the approach of taking this opportunity to learn who/what it is that I'm observing and drawing, as some of the journalers have suggested. I like the idea of following up with identifications by scientific and common names, and learning appropriate scientific terminology to provide context for details of my observations. I like the ideas of zooming in to look at close details, and zooming out to look at the bigger picture. The ideas of scheduling regular journaling times are also good--I know that instilling of habits and improving are only likely to come with consistency. 3. I appreciate all the journalers sharing their work--I think you are all very brave to share you work with us. My journaling idea is only that I think that those of us who tend to harbour judgments about ourselves and our budding artistic talent should be kind and compassionate to ourselves, and give ourselves a chance to learn to express ourselves through our art.