Journaling and tea are beautifully complementary. What could be more pleasant than sitting down to jot some therapeutic or reference thoughts, with a cup of tea nearby? Here, Ifang discusses diaries and journals.
The Diary of Anne Frank is without doubt the most widely-read diary of all time. The Journals of Lewis and Clark chronicling the three-year expedition (1803 -1806) and The Diary of Samuel Pepys on the English Restoration period are two other notable historical diaries that appear most often in Internet quick search. During the heyday of “chick lit,” fictional Bridget Jones’s Diary received all the hype.
A diary is a journal. Or a diary is to some extent different from a journal. Conflict in these two definitions does not warrant debate. Journaling seems more free-style, no? I journal the same way I scrapbook.
Journaling and Tea on Etsy
Etsy, founded in 2005, offers myriad selections of unique, frequently handmade, stationeries ideal for gifting. Junk journals, as the name implies, collate and bind all types of papers, including recycled material, hence them always being one-of-the-kind. One useful offering is tea journals, which record tea tasting experiences for future reference. If I had paid more attention and noticed that my latest purchase, a vintage leather notebook, had to be shipped to me from the subcontinent I would not have ordered it. At the moment, alleviating international cargo volume is as important as supporting domestic businesses.
Writing Frequency
The existing edition of Queen Victoria’s seven-decades-long, 111-volume diaries contains only one third of the original, much of which was altered and expurgated by her daughter Princess Beatrice. The first entry in my coffee-dyed journal, purchased from Etsy seller NOMAD Moon Magic, is dated Sunday, June 28th, 2020, after a 20-plus-year hiatus in journaling. I have not started a new page after Friday, January 15th, 2021. Sometimes I wish to suffer from hypergraphia – the compulsion to write – I have never been inflicted though.
Tea-Dyed Journals For the Future
Sitting on my desk is another NOMAD Moon Magic creation – a cute pink tea-dyed journal, and in my Etsy shopping cart some colorful tea-stained loose paper from The Paper Outpost. I am ready to start a new journal on January 1st, 2022.
Images provided and copyright held by author
