Task 2b: the 9 day challenge!

For the few weeks I've been keeping my journal, but for task 2b lets pay particular interest to the 9 day challenge as I've named it. lol. So, I chose November 1st - 9th. 9 easy to keep track of days conveniently coinciding with the dates of the month. I went through the 9 ways of enhancing the journals and had a go at each one. And some I felt rather silly doing, (seeing my day through the eyes of a pencil case I'm afraid is just not for me) and some that I felt captured my journal writing style and could help me to develop it further to get better reflection on the days. I'm going to pick out a few that I liked and used and developed and briefly mention the few that I felt didn't work quite so well.

So start at the top shall we!

• Description: description suited me completely,infact it is pretty much what i'd been doing all along. Keeping a basic list of what happened, where and when with the odd bit of extra. I'm glad that it was on the list because it put my mind at ease that I hadn't been doing it wrong, but at the same time I don't think that it really pushed me to develop the idea and think outside the box.

• Initial: this was a good one, I like to think of it really as the next step on from description. It just goes into slightly more depth and gets a bit more opinion based writing in there. I think writing using the 'initial' form can often be a lot more revealing about the day than the description itself by mentioning what it made me think, and how it made me feel so I found this helpful and an easy step on from the first.

• Reflection: again this seemed to be the next logical jump, by just revealing slightly more again about the day itself. Reflection is great because it encourages you to look at the pros and cons of what you did that day and combines it with your mood. Combining these three views I think gives a good basic start to journal writing and by noting down anything unexpected that it reminds us that not everything goes to plan, or has to be as mundane as it may first seem.

• List: I liked using listing because it's so simple and relative to what your thinking about. It worked for me a little like a brain storm where the list had strands coming off of it on things that i'd like to look into further or reasons why I enjoyed activities. My brain is constantly jumping onto the next thing, with my form of dyslexia my mind thinks faster than I can write or sometimes speak so with the list having the option in front of me to branch off into another area was great and really helpful as I could come back to what I was thinking afterwards.

• Evaluation: I liked evaluating, it's very basic but again it allows you to pick out the pros and cons of your day. I found I was noticing a lot more in general, things that I may have overlooked previously. By evaluating I could summarise and forget the bits I know I didn't need to stress myself over and therefore things to avoid worrying about in the future.

• Graphs/diagrams/charts: before i'd even started this one I had a feeling it might not be for me, just comes accross a bit toooooo mathematical, but I tried to be open minded and gave it a go. Unfortunately I was right, there is just something about dividing my day up into sections and graphs that makes it far to clinical for me. I'm human, and my day is my life, not a test result or colour coded chart to be inspected. I use charts for the aspects of my life that they can be of help for, such as training at the gym for my half marathon. Using a chart or graph here is good to show how much or how little progresss is being made, but for the everyday it's not for me. However, I colour coordinated the diagrams apprpriately, and it showed I spent far to much time at work than working on my career. The reason I've found that a bit irrelevant at the moment is because I have to work to pay the bills, so seeing it in bright red just didn't help.

• What if?- now then, 'what if' was an interesting one, I do quite like the 'what if.' At first I didn't think that I'd like this one, but actually as I was I writing I found I could explore it more and more. It makes sense to consider what could have happened, and if it didn't go to plan, then why not? What could I have done differently, or could I do differently next time to change the outcome. I combined this with Kolb's learning cycle and found that by using the conditional i'd slot into the cycle at  'Reflective observation'. Working out what I need to do differently first, and then going from there. Considering what I would love to happen and what I would hate to happen gave me a bit of motivation to work harder to find an agent and work oustide the restaurant, it helped to remind me what was important and to let go of the things that didn't matter that day.

• Another view: well.... this was interesting. I struggled I have to say, to think outside the box on this one. I think I'm a funny one, because I am very creative but my mind is logical and for some reason I couldn't get my head around the logic of thinking of my day from the perspective of an object. However, I started to push my thinking, and thought of times when it could be relevant such as, If I was choreographing or directing a piece around an object, seeing the day from the point of view of that object actually could be quite interesting. Seeing my day from the point of view of another person however was great, a real insight into what others might be thinking. We get some very difficult people in my work place and sometimes it's hard to stop your face reacting naturally to something absolutely ridiculous that they may have said, before of course you realise and behave as an employee should. But seeing those ridiculous conversations which unfortunately can shape my day from their side was very entertaining. I think for audition purposes this could be interesting, to see the audition from the view of the panel rather than myself, so I think I'll try to employ it, just out of curiosity after my next audition.

I really enjoyed this task as I've been able to reflect upon my days and then reflect upon my own reflection to pick out the most rewarding and affective ways to do it. It's been really interesting and now I think i'll employ a number of the techniques combined and developed into one to continue my journal from here.