Finished.

Done.  Complete. 

After a great deal of effort this week, at last I can clear the decks of everything South America-related and move on to other things (I have quite a list).  I really ought to have resisted the temptation to do as I always do and taken my hero’s advice to forget about creating a journal this time round, for it ended up being a bit half-hearted and mainly a repository for one of two bits of ephemera which wouldn’t fit elsewhere.

I’d used the little grey Moleskine cahiers to scribble in as I went and as usual, the notes I jotted in there are a much more effective means of recording the story than anything.  This was the small drawing I did following our flight over the Nazca Lines in Peru.  Nothing more needed really, don’t you agree?

As usual, I feel I can be quite free to write down my thoughts in there!

It’s also a great way to spend five minutes here and there, practising my drawing.  I don’t feel constrained to create a pretty page or to get everything correct – I scribble and cross things out and don’t feel I’m making a respectable piece of work.  I’m just jotting stuff down.

Whereas in my journal, I feel I have to make something more attractive and “finished”. 

After a few days I had developed a common style for each page with the date, the weather and where we were.  I tried to draw and paint a couple of things in there but that paper just wouldn’t stand up to anything vaguely wet.  Even the rubber stamp ink soaked through if I wasn’t careful.

So occasionally, it was hard to fill the rest of the page and as a result, there’s quite a lot of blank space.

I filled a whole page with the cut out Andean cross pattern and went on to fill the opposite side with a few details about the day.

By the time I got to the last couple of days, I really struggled to finish it. 

I felt that on this occasion I’d told the same stories over and over again.  Why?  There really wasn’t any need to create that journal at all and I ought to have given it up before I went too far with it.  Never mind.  I’ll remember for next time!

Won’t I?