April 3, 2026

You’re invited: the inner library project

A self-run experiment in documenting the search for meaning — reading, journaling, and intentional living.

Whose words Every sentence here is mine, written unassisted in April 2026, before any of the method on the writing page existed. The later work: a light edit on republication — typos fixed, the overview tightened, one line moved to where it lands. That edit was AI-assisted. The prose is not.

This is the initial stake in the ground for the ongoing, living process of documentation and appreciation I call the inner library project: a way to use reading, journaling and intentional living to find meaning, and to turn that meaning into authentic self-expression in a growingly synthetic world.

For context: I have an English degree, and I long ago stopped letting jokes about how useless it is get to me. Why? Most people don’t know a thing about what literary analysis actually is. They have no on-ramp to why a person would dedicate themselves to the deep study of word, story and meaning — and to the search for meaning that is abundantly evident across all of recorded time. But just sit with the gravity of a library: so much human effort, so much life lived, to make all of that possible.

I aim to change that. I want to use this project as a path toward shared understanding — or, less loftily, toward the ability to have a productive conversation about books and ideas that isn’t just re-hashing your favorite plot points.

A note: I learned yesterday that inner library is already a French term, bibliothèque intérieure. Maybe that is my inner French ancestors telling me to bring it to light in a way only a plainspoken Midwest American can.

Welcome to the inner library project

This is something I have been working on since 2020: how to use sketchbook journals, pens and markers and stickers and art, books and written text of any length, movement and dance and flow, and intentional living to document and celebrate existence.

It started off as something like a video game log and a goal planner. It has turned into an experiment in recognizing my own mythology being built and rebuilt over time. Each time I finish a journal I close a book on that era, quite literally. And now that I have over five years of memories to flip through, I am grateful I took that time daily to hold a thread of me consistently.

My memories from the 2010s? Collections of selfies and travel shots and posed social media photos, plus those good old-fashioned brain memories, which are of course a fickle machine to rely on. So I found myself with nothing tangible to show for all those lived experiences. Certainly nothing that reflected my lived inner experience.

Which brings me to why I started journaling in the first place: a way to use my love of reading and drawing to capture my day-to-day life and reflect on my habits, hopes, dreams and all that jazz.

Every day we RJL

Read, journal, live. That is the whole process, and it is meant to be done daily rather than done well.

Read

Read whatever you want. Read long essays. Read short stories. Read gossip. Read bus ads. Read Russian novels. Meaning is all around, and I find you can fast-track your appreciation of long text by seeing the artistry put into the short stuff too. I have more to say later on how to add lenses to your reading, how to take notes you will actually enjoy, and how to really digest a book.

I write notes on non-fiction as a hobby. I do not see mental images at all while reading fiction — not one — and I still enjoy reading as an intellectual, emotional and creative exercise.

Journal

Let me start off by saying that I really loathe fill-in-the-blank content. It is at an all-time high. Do we all need to be so carefully guided? You can call me cynical or a hater; I do not care. The entire industry of guided journaling and planners could collapse overnight and I would toast its funeral. Smooches, XO.

Okay, inner hater out. Here is the love part. What I love about journaling is the ability to take a blank surface and transform it into something. You started at blank, and now it is not. That is magic. You’re magic.

And if you already bought some guided journals, of course don’t be wasteful. But think about how that person came up with those questions, and know that you have the ability to do that too. For free, next time.

Live

We cannot live fully on the page, nor fully in our own head. The page is where we reflect our lived experience — which means we also have to go and live one.

The biggest issue I see in people who want to be Someone of Note (TM) is that they throw everything into the grind and never live in any other realm. Consume, scroll, repeat. That is not a life you can draw from; it is a loop that eats the material you would need in order to have anything to say.

So live intentionally and loudly, and take up space in the world. Loud here means with your heart open and full of joy and mirth — not loud like American tourists shouting at their kids at Disneyland Paris or whatever. Ew.

The future belongs to the cross-pollinators. As you go around in your life and learn gratitude for the variety of experience available to you, more experiences become available. Something like that. I am not an authority on how life unfolds, only on how my life unfolds, but it seems to go like this:

life begets life

If you are sitting at home alone on your phone, day in and day out, you have no momentum. But you have nothing to share with the world, you say? Well, now we are full circle, and I can teach you how to really digest books and media and ideas in a way you can translate into interesting conversation, or into art.

Build your inner library, and learn how to read from other inner libraries.

Hope and scope

Reading as a practice. Using books and written works to learn more about yourself, and about how the ideas shared in them interact with the larger story we all build collectively across time. There is only one story. Learn to read it.

Journaling as integration. Developing a daily journal practice to reflect on your activities and your thoughts — your lived existence — and building a tangible, art-filled shelf that connects you to your inner library as you grow and learn.

Living as an unfolding story. When you really start seeing life as a story in which you explore what is authentic to you, you start to see who is living in their truth and who is not. Live your life as a flower chasing the sun. Nourish your roots and breathe fresh air. Bloom in your own time. Don’t let the weeds keep you down. If we all allow ourselves to be the unique plants we are, the world becomes a garden. Do you dig it?

In sum: the scope of this project is to build an ongoing relationship with your own rich and beautiful inner library. Your precious memories, loved songs, felt poems, treasured novels and favorite plays. Your own journal notes and plans and sketches. Your life, as you grow into the authentic You.

This project is an invitation to build something real: a personal archive, a network of meaning, a life you can actually look back on and want to share, and hold as preciously as your favorite stories.

This was part of The Inner Library Project — a practice of making meaning from reading, journaling, and intentional living.