My Experience With The Journey Journal

We had to write forty entries in our journal about what was going through our heads for the most part but more than just writing random thoughts that were running through our minds we had  to “go for the jugular”  which basically means to really dive into deep though and express your true feelings in your writing. Anger, happiness, sadness, frustration, stress, these are some of the emotions that you might feel when doing this sort of exercise, that and the occasional hand cramp that you could get from writing too much or too fast. What was the solution? That’s where the “Life Compass” comes into play. 

The life compass was part of the journey journal that at least for me served as an equalizer after venting so much in my writing. The compass was drawing of a circle on your notebook with a word written in the upper, lower, left and right part of the circle. The words that were written were: physical, psychological or mental, emotional and spiritual. The point of each word is to give them a number value from 1 to 3 expressing how well you were feeling at the time for each category. The lower the value the worst you were feeling and the higher the value the better, this helped in seeing progress from week to week on just how much a person can change in many different aspects of their life. In my experience I found the compass useful and I noticed that my spiritual value never went down from 3, this was exciting for me because I tend to pride myself in being a very open person that can adapt to different points of view on numerous aspects and I felt that the spiritual value reflected that part of me. That said though, the values for the other categories did fluctuate frequently. For me the journal experience was a very interesting idea that gave me a different perspective and I could even continue doing it as a way of venting in my writing whenever I feel the need or a way to relieve stress. 

Why Did I Chose This Title?

I picked this title because I feel it resonates with my perspective on life where we walk around the world with a certain goal in our mind that we get clouded and are not aware of everything that's happening around us. In reality we never know where we're going to end up, for some people it mite be a horrible thought to think about, not really knowing what life has in store for you next but that's also the fun part! happiness can come from any door in the hallway that is life.

My Journey Journal

My journal, at the beginning of the course when we started creating this journal, I initially thought this was going to be a rather boring and bland experience until I actually started getting into the whole experience. Obviously at first I wasn't able to "go for the jugular" like it was intended but in my opinion I was able to go for it a few times. It's a'lot harder than it sounds really, usually taking a subject and going deep into thought about you think it means, deciphering it and getting to a conclusion can actually take a mental toll on you. The journal was truly an experience and the meaning behind the pictures that I selected is usually my idea of traveling and some other subjects that interest me like music and the ocean. The Life Compass is like fluctuating graphic that tells you basically how I was feeling during that specific day or maybe even that week. The graphic also represented how good or bad you were feeling by a number value that you added u at the end,the higher the value the happier you were basically, I was presently surprised when I realized that most of the time I managed to keep a consisted value that was rather high.

What this journal means to me is very difficult to describe because yes it is very personal in some cases and in other cases it's very random but all in all I would feel okay if someone were to read it, yes I'll admit I will get embarrassed which is a normal reaction. Having said that I think it's more comical and care free, yes I do believe that I touch some rather hard subjects at times and yes there is a bit of cursing due to frustration but I believe that is part of writing and expressing yourself.

What is Puerto Rican Culture?

Puerto Rico, a small but beautiful island in the Caribbean that is know for it's warm weather, beautiful beaches and great food. It sounds like paradise really and to some maybe it is but for the people that live here that are aware of some of the issues here in the island, they know that we Puerto Ricans have some work to put in especially because of the economic struggle. Puerto Rico suffers from a political perspective in which we are in a constant tug of war between 2 parties that do not have the best interest of the working class people. Every 4 years we have a different party take over this country promising change and a better future but honestly it all really stays the same, all that happens is that people wake up in fear not knowing if they'll have a stable long term job or if they're going to get screwed over by one the political powers. That being said, the rest of the worlds perspective on Puerto Rico is really is a rather gloomy one. Us Puerto Ricans are perceived to be loud people that live in a third world country when in reality it isn't that bad at all. Puerto Rico produces a great amount of talented people that are known world wide whether it's in music, dancing, sports, art, etc... We celebrate every event and we mourn every death, almost like a family, it's a united sort of feeling to be Puerto Rican, people remember events that basically paralyzed the island like every time we had a PPV boxing match with Miguel Cotto or Felix "Tito" Trinidad representing us worldwide, e every victory was a celebration and every loss left a sour taste in your mouth that felt like it lasted forever. It's this deep sense of pride while at the same time managing to stay humble that created these down to earth people that I wish would represent "boricuas" but sadly we are often over looked as a doomed country with an incredible dept  and violent worldwide news. But for me as a person that has lived all 19 years of my life on this island that has some of the good and some of the bad that occurs here, I see hope in a new generation of kids that are smarter that are  working with these awful resources that thy are given and are creating amazing things and reaching new heights that we have never seen before, I think that Puerto Rico has a bright future if we have the right leaders leading the way and if all our talents does not decide to abandon ship to leave for the U.S.A or any other parts of the world that they feel provides them with a better future.