52 weekly maps with daily 6 word stories

A new project for my Personal Atlas journey in 2024

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Hello, dear Mappery Moodler!

2024 seems to be underway and life is returning to whatever we call “normal” again. Here in the southern part of England it seems to have been blowing gales and raining solidly for 2 months - a result of the many named storms battering us.

Getting to know six word stories again

When I was doing my 365 photo projects in 2014 to 2016, I did loads of six word story challenges using photographs (my own and other photographer’s) as prompts. I’ve realised I’ve missed doing them.

Inspired by Hemingway's famous six-word tale, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” the "six word story" has served as a prompt for both writers and photographers for many years. For examples visit Six Word Stories

Just before Christmas, I posted the first six word story I’ve written for years! It turns out that this was exactly the spark of inspiration I needed to come up with my next project! Read on.

I love committing to year long projects, either as weekly, 52-week projects or as daily projects. Since 2014, I have done at least one a year. Last year I made an art zine for each week of the year, as an example (see footnotes¹ for more).

Visual journaling

But, I’ve been asking myself how I can combine maps and recording the daily delights of my real life more.

I’m happy chugging along using personal cartography to create maps to record my lifelong journey - a form of visual journaling. For over six years, a daily journaling habit has been a foundational part of my life and through it, I've become more self-aware, confident and reduced anxiety and stress. Since starting to create personal maps, they’ve become a valuable addition to my journaling routine, facilitating my journey of self-exploration.

But I wanted to find a way to make a map part of my every day journaling practice.

A year-long moodle filled with daily six-word tales!

I’ve come up with a daily writing project combining hand drawn maps and 6 word stories. My aim is to write a six word story every day on a map outline that represents a week of my life (52 weeks). I want to have a whole year of these tiny stories, to collate into a book by December. I hope to share these stories and maps here in my Personal Atlas as a monthly collection.

I started writing some six word stories last year as a test run - here’s an example of a weekly map ⬇️ with the seven little stories (plus one extra for the 31st December).

Six word stories for Week 52 of 2023

What do I hope to get out of this?

The more I make these simple maps of things that happen in my everyday life, the more I realise how beneficial they are to my mental and general wellbeing

The six word stories are a quick, simple way to capture one notable thing from my life each day - an everyday delight.

By adding the stories to a map, not only are they captured visually but they’ll also be easy to find and refer to, and hopefully collate at the end of the year. Well, that’s the plan 😊

Let’s hope the rain stops at some point. I’ll be back soon, with either a narrative about a personal map, or a set of 4 everyday moodle maps. Take care of yourselves as you ease into the new year.

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Other things to explore

• If you’d like to know more about mapping your own life, do get in touch² and we can talk.

• Head to the Index Page for all the maps and stories so far.

• You can also visit my new Mappery Moodles website to find out more about what I do with maps!

• Fancy earning a paid subscription? By sharing this letter and by referring friends you’ll receive special benefits such as complementary paid subscriptions.

1. Other 365 and 52-week projects: 3 daily 365 photography projects, 52 double exposure photographs, 52 playing card collages, 52 zines and more.

2. You can email me on debs.stott@mapperymoodles.me