How do you do your journaling? As first person or 3rd person

DebraB

DebraB

Active member
Curious as to how everyone does their journaling.
I am doing a 100 page scrapbook. I am much more comfortable with journaling like conversation as if I was talking to the kids. journaling "Dad and I went on vacation to..." instead of "John and Deb went on vacation to." I have thought about doing a page in front. That would list the first names of individuals in the scrapbook along with their full names. If in the scrapbook I mentioned 'grandpa' I would list on the front page... grandpa - Joe Smith etc.
I want the journaling to feel natural, yet I do realize that generations from now won't know who is who if full names aren't given.
Any thoughts?
 
I almost always journal in first person. And that's a good point about full names. I don't use full names because of privacy, since I post nearly everything I create.
 
Good question! When I journal, I pretend that I'm sitting down with a loved one. What would I tell that person about that photo / that event? Then that's what I write. When I make pages that will go into a book as a gift (I make albums for the little nieces and nephews), I take a note from journalists and add "cutlines" or "photo captions" under the photosin a separate text box. That could be where you spell out the full names and relationships of the people in the photos.

For these albums, once the kids get old enough to talk, I do an annual "interview" where they write their name and age and then fill in the blanks to answer questions like their favorite food, what they want to be when they grow up, etc. As they get older, the questions evolve to become more age appropriate. That way, they've contributed to their own album and we have a record of their likes and their penmanship throughout the years.

When hubby and I travel, at the end of each trip, we write down out a bullet list of our favorites... favorite stops, favorite foods, favorite moments, etc. And sometimes our least favorites! LOL! So I will have bullet journaling, as well, just to mix things up.

On really important pages (like when hubby proposed to me), I did ask him to write out his memory of that day. I did the same. Then I put both our stories on the same layout.

Ha... one thing to note... my younger brother was flipping through one of my printed albums one day and commented that one of my pages had a story with a different version than he remembered it. I told him that "she who scrapbooks writes the family history." HA!!! I told him he was welcome to make his own scrapbook page with his own version of the story if he was so inclined. I think he wandered away at that point. LOL!!!! We scrapbooker have a lot of power! LOL!!!!
 
I journal in first person, but somewhere in each album, the full name of everyone is included. Sometimes I journal in first person, but where I do the date, I will put "Lynnette and Karen, 10 July, 2023" or some such thing.
 
I switch it up, depending who the audience is going to be. If it's an online layout only (like for a scrapping challenge), I'll use first person. If it's something I plan to print, I make sure everyone's name is included somehow in 3rd person, whether in the journaling or a photo caption (but sometimes I'll use first person in the journaling if the situation calls for it).
 
I switch it up as well. I try and always journal in 3rd person. I always have thought that if someone is looking at it in future generations, they might not know who the "I" and "me" is writing. But honestly I think it ends up being about 50/50. lol.

I like the idea of listing the names like that though! That is a great idea.
 
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