Welcome to Wordcatching! This is a gathering place for words, for those of us who love them, for those among us who write them, and especially those who love writing late into the night in pages of their very own journal. You may be a longhand journaler with a velvet-backed, hand-sewn, leather-bound, acid-free archival journal, a brightly colored Leuchtturm 1917 bullet journal and about as many markers and washi tape as can fit into 14 shoeboxes, or someone who never knew that the blurts and lists jotted on the margins of your paper or on a coffeehouse napkin MATTERS. And matter a lot.
Those words, those thoughts, emotions, ideas, fears, etc., written down? They amount to a path of delicious, demystifying, and surprisingly deep self-discovery. A journal kept with the intention of collecting both the inane and the important, the minutiae and the miraculous, every question you ask yourself in the journal seeks to be answered. The act of catching those words, by any means necessary, is my definition of “wordcatching” since 1999.
How do I know? I’ve been journaling since the age of 8, and through all those .99 cent spiral notebooks; the planners, diaries, and journals; oversized sturdy blank artist sketchbooks, scrapbooks, morning pages; and most recently, the addition of a bullet journal and all its accoutrements, I have studied and reaped the benefits of transforming personal writing into total creative freedom. I have taught hundreds of folks about the power of writing, the healing and therapeutic nature of writing with intention, and followed that passion all the way to the International Federation of Biblio/Poetry Therapy to earn a certification as a Poetry Therapist, which later evolved to a CAPF— Certified Applied Poetry Facilitator.
My purpose in pursuing that degree was to see to what depths I could go with my journaling. My purpose with this website is to find out how I can help as many people as I can, by sharing my experience, some tools and techniques, and celebrating the simple act of wordcatching.