Has anyone seen my mojo?

I’m finding it difficult to complete my latest travel journal.  I know from experience that unless I get on with it during or immediately after the trip, I’ll find it hard.  But in spite of good intentions, here I am again, trying like mad to complete it before I move on to the next thing.

I got off to a reasonable start, recording all of those small details which tend to get forgotten or overwritten by events.  I spent time in Hong Kong drawing the framework so that I could do a bit of colouring in when I had an odd five minutes and of course, waking up early is a good time to sit quietly at the desk and draw.

I managed to keep it up for a few days in Myanmar, relying on my favourite ways of incorporating a wealth of ephemera – yes, the turkish map fold appeared about four pages in!

But as soon as we embarked Ananda and began a tight schedule, following a daily programme of activities not to mention enjoying the company of our fellow travellers, we were simply doing too many interesting things to keep up and the result is a few blank pages.

A lot of blank pages, in fact.  Because once I’ve let it go, it’s doubly hard to keep up.  After all, do I work on today’s page or return to the last one I was working on? At the end of another busy day, with my head buzzing full of the most recent experiences, it’s hard to think back.  So, I focus on my blog and keep that up to date as much as I can, so I can rely on that to remind me when it comes to creating the journal page.

At least I scribble in a few topics for the day and on this occasion, I printed out some page titles too, which means that I can dip in and out when I come across something which can be stuck in there.

So when we had a sea day and I wanted to have a quiet hour or two, I could complete a day or two in the middle, knowing I was on the right page, if you see what I mean.  But there remained quite a few empty pages to fill.

I’ve tried to tackle the project methodically, so began in Bagan (isn’t that a song title!?)  After a few short bursts of drawing, painting and sticking, I’ve moved on a bit and have completed several pages.

This morning, I made a page about the Bamboo workshop and used a photo to record the journey.  No prizes for identifying which one!  I don’t have that much ephemera to fill the pages though, so the pages are quite sparse.

Not quite as sparse as this one though.

Perhaps that’s the answer for getting it done?

Anyway, in between visiting classes (three this week – should have been four but one was cancelled), writing reports and attending meetings, I am making a real effort to fill some of those empty pages.  After all, soon, we’ll be off on the next trip!

(no, not that soon, really)

In the meantime, if you should see my mojo, please box its ears and send it home.

I wonder if it got packed up after last weekend’s show?