So I'm an avid journaler.
I absolutely love putting pen to paper and letting my thoughts flow.
This is the way that I get to know myself.
It's the way I heal myself.
And it's just a way
to document my life.
Today I'm sharing most of my journal collection,
just because I think it'd be fun to just look back and see where it all started.
This first one is from junior high.
This is when I really started to pick up journaling consistently.
I started with poetry of heartbreak.
Honestly, all of my junior high years were writing
about my relationships, love, heartbreak, lots of emo moments.
I was really into rock
and emo music, and I would write down song lyrics that spoke to me.
And yeah, a lot of emotions.
But at the end of this notebook, I did keep a page
of my favorite inspirational quotes.
So maybe that's where it started, I don't know.
Alright, this notebook is from the later years of high school.
And again:
relationships, heartbreak, relationships, heartbreak.
Oh, and I think this is hilarious.
I kept a breakup letter I wrote in high school.
This is actually the draft breakup letter.
What I did was: I wrote it out, I gave it to my friend Tawny, and she was like,
"Okay, I'm going to highlight the parts that are too mean."
And she highlighted like 90%, and so I had to rewrite the breakup letter.
So this is just the draft.
The real one is in the hands of another guy.
Alright, so this notebook is from college, my college years.
I kept a poem
that my friend gave to me, something that she thought was sweet.
At the end of this notebook,
I noticed that I started to write chords and lyrics to songs.
I guess I started to try
to write music in college.
It never really came out to anything, though.
I basically just had a lot of ideas, but never really finished anything.
Alright, this is a notebook that my friend Allen gave to me before I studied abroad in
Italy.
I kept it as my travel notebook.
A place to journal my thoughts as I was travelling
and studying abroad.
Italy was a place where I really got to start soul-searching
and take more time to myself.
I think this is where I started to journal more and read more.
It's so funny to look back at my to do list back then, and what I was going through.
At this point I was trying to find inspiration, I guess, inspiration and guidance
on what to do with my life from here on out.
Not to lie though, those first couple weeks in Italy were really hard
because I went without finding an apartment.
So that's my receipt at the hotel I stayed at
for the first week.
I didn't plan on staying there that long.
I thought I'd find an apartment
by then, but I just couldn't find one.
It was tough to be in a new country
where I don't speak the language.
But I'm okay.
I've lived.
I'm okay now.
I remember doodling the couples I saw there, saying how romantic this place is.
This is one of my favorite entries of all time.
I basically went to the theater in Milan
to watch Lang Lang play.
Lang Lang is a pianist and he is amazing.
I was journaling in the theater, sitting by myself in the box office and being super inspired,
and I just kept flowing and flowing and flowing.
And it was really, really a beautiful moment.
I kept the ticket stub, and on top I wrote down the melody he was playing at that moment
so I would not forget it.
And I kept that brochure: Lang Lang at Teatro alla Scala.
(Teatro?)
And I was still trying to write music in Italy, just trying to find inspiration and create
something.
The rest of my entries are of my travels.
I travelled to over ten cities in those six months,
and it was really life-changing.
As you can see, I kept my receipts from shopping.
And I just like to keep this notebook separate, just because it's a very unique chapter
in my life that I cherish.
This notebook, I got from France.
And since this, I've started to buy notebooks
whenever I travel because to me, it's like a souvenir that I can cherish for many, many
years.
These entries are about my post-grad life, being lost, figuring out what to do,
just documenting all the random things I was doing at that time.
Literally, I was doing
so many different things.
A lot of failed opportunities.
And all the while, I was trying to work on music.
So here I wrote down my inspirations
in music, and planning out how to create my album, which I did in 2013.
This is when I was actively getting into self-help and reading a lot of books,
exploring and experimenting with a lot of different things in life.
And I would always be
reevaluating what is meaningful to me, what makes me happy.
So this is one of those entries.
This entry I wrote when I was in New York.
This was after I finished my album
and I was playing two shows in New York and it was snowing,
and I was just there with friends.
It was super fun, a really good memory.
A few months after that I was kind of lost again.
I wasn't sure if I should
continue with music or listen to my heart which was kind of tugging me in another direction,
maybe entrepreneurial?
I wasn't so sure at the time.
Here is an entry
where I was talking about, "I have a show today, I have a performance.
Yet I've watched
YouTube for two hours."
Something about YouTube was intriguing me, and I asked myself,
"Why do I-why am I so attracted to the lifestyle of YouTubers?"
And I guess this is where
I got honest with myself with what lifestyle I really want with my life, and I thought
that
I kind of gave this dream away where I gave up on my music YouTube channel.
But the dream was still there, so I had to explore it.
I wasn't quite sure if it was even feasible and it was scary to be lost again.
But a few entries later, I noticed that I wrote this one where I was like,
"I have to allow myself to try.
I have to allow myself to be vulnerable,
and just give it what I got, you know?"
A few months later, that's where I came up with the name: Lavendaire.
Yeah, that's where it began.
I started planning my new channel and this new direction
that I was going in.
and that's where that notebook ended.
This notebook, I'm just going to flash through because I've shown it a couple times
in previous videos already.
It's my Current Me Future Me journal where I document
where I am, where I want to be.
I also have monthly highlights
and kind of a little bit of planning in this journal.
This is my current bedside journal.
I got this in New York at the Frick Museum,
and it holds a special meaning because that museum experience was really special to me.
I felt like that was a lucky day for me where there was a long line, it was raining,
I was by myself.
And the security guards, either they liked me or they felt sorry for me
that I was by myself in the rain, that they just let me in to cut the line.
I feel like there were a lot of serendipitous moments during that trip.
So this notebook really brings me back to those special moments.
These are entries I would write at night whenever I felt the urge to express myself
or write something.
These are just the years of going through Lavendaire, planning my life.
Here is my Vivid Vision that I've shared with you guys before in a webinar.
But yeah, this is where it all happens, all the life planning and the life-assessing.
Yeah, trust in the universe.
I have my moments of inspiration and moments of doubt,
just like any normal person, you know?
This is my current morning pages notebook.
This is where I do stream of consciousness writing
where I just flow in the mornings.
I don't always write every day anymore,
but I just write whenever I can.
And these are all of my previous morning pages journals.
I love using composition notebooks.
I just made it tradition to do so.
But yeah, I feel like I'm pretty impressed and proud
when I look at all of these notebooks and I can say that I filled up each
and every one of those pages.
It's kinda crazy, right?
I usually never go through
my old morning pages notebooks just because they're so messy and it's just so
stream of consciousness that they don't really make sense sometimes.
But I like to keep them because why not?
This is me, this is the evolution of me
documented on pages, day by day.
I think there's a beauty in that that I really appreciate,
so I will never throw these away.
This notebook I got from Japan, and it's a notebook for me to take notes
on things that I'm learning.
Whenever I take an online class or something,
this will be my notebook.
It's fairly new.
I have a lot of unused pages.
And lastly, my Artist of Life Workbook.
Most of you have probably seen this workbook before.
Basically, it's a way to plan your year.
And I have a lot of blank pages in this notebook.
I've used that do to a success and joy and gratitude journal.
So whenever something good happens in my life, I will document it here.
And that's it!
Those are my journals from my journal-taking life.
Kind of excessive,
and that's not even all of it.
But that's okay.
This is me.
Thank you for watching.
See you next time.
Bye!