I am certain that some people keep journals the 'right' way with precisely dated entries and logs of their activities and descriptive whole proper sentences in flowing beautiful cursive or precise hand lettering, such that they are a chronological window to their activities and thoughts over time. I have journals, yes. Many of them. All over the place. Rare is the sentence in them, however. They are lists of priorities, lists of impressions, questions, ideas, half-baked thoughts in no particular order, rarely dated with so much as the year, in sloppy barely legible mostly lower case printing that rambles across the page and even onto the next one. Often the entries are sideways or at some jaunty angle if jotted in the car or in a tent or on a hike. Tiny messy sketches of art and design ideas are interspersed with to do lists and chore lists and shopping lists and phone numbers with no owner specified and addresses with no city or zip.
But half the fun in coming across of of these oddities in a pile of magazines or maps or books or knitting or at the bottom of a suitcase or the pocket of a messenger bag is interpreting the words and then trying to place them at a time, a place, an event.
This is an entry from camping in the park at the first WomanSong I attended in Grand Rapids, North Dakota in 2007:
"Coyotes
Cottonwood leaves
Sunsets
Shadows of branches
Star-filled skies
Mist
Rain
Cold - So?"
"Bittersweet Lake
Little Star Lake
Nebish Lake
I always have at least one in the car, usually sliding around dangerously on the dashboard, I always have a couple in in my computer bag, in the bag with whatever reading or knitting I am doing. I take one in a pocket on hikes and one of those nifty waterproof numbers when I backpack. When I get an idea for an artwork, I make a little sketch. Sometimes, I know it is an idea for a linoleum print or a felt, but sometimes it is just an image that could be done in most any medium, and in that case, I will try to find or create a photograph of it first, then the photos will serve as reference when I convert it to other media. I write down ideas for articles, ideas I want to bounce off friends for discussion, things I want to look up online and learn more about, even ideas for talks or classes that might be fun to teach. If I am working on a project of some sort, it is a way to capture ideas for it that occur at other odd times. I have kept one outside the shower if I am working really hard on a project and having a storm of ideas. My fiction always starts with an image or a few words that create an image. Working it into a story only comes later. Sometimes, when I am in a mood of prolific "thinking things up" they are in roughly chronological order with a blog topic next to an interesting image for felting next to a jewelry design next to a question about a prairie plant. Sometimes, I make an effort to put like ideas together in various parts of the book by making sort of a topic key at the front with blackened marks at page edges. The ideas scattered about the book have black marked edges to link them with the topic list. 
