When I was a kid, every birthday, Christmas, and occasionally some Easters were accompanied by a brand-new journal. Most of the time, they were small/pocket-sized, decorated with floral designs or my initial. These went with me everywhere. Every minor thought or random idea was inscribed in No. 2 pencil – my rankings of an assorted chocolate box from Trader Joe’s, a list of beans I found in a grocery store in Fort Bragg, the Greek alphabet (yes, I read Percy Jackson) – the typical meandering, ephemeral things that float through our heads that 10-year-old me deemed worthy of jotting down. Every other year or so, when I had gone through the last one, I was gifted a much larger journal, with a leather cover and maybe even gold embossing. These were, of course, reserved for much more serious discourse. Reflections on my day, my sister, school, and friends, committed to paper in respectable complete sentences but the still undisciplined prose of a tween. I still look back on these now (I’ve found it impossible to get rid of a single one), sometimes remembering whatever it is I had described, sometimes remembering the actual act of writing it down, sometimes having no idea what I’m reading about.
As I was reading through one recently, it occurred to me that I hadn’t received a new journal in years. I suppose it made sense. I hadn’t asked for a journal in years. I hadn’t thought about writing any of my thoughts down for years. I found the latest one I could. It was sitting in a drawer, empty apart from the first few pages I had lazily scrawled in, as if out of obligation. I couldn’t say when exactly this happened, but I was sad to realize that I had completely fallen out of love with journaling. I wanted to fall back in love with it, and while it took a while, I was able to do so. For anyone who has felt similarly, here’s how I did it.
The first step was recognizing that there had actually been several occasions where I had been enchanted with the idea of journaling. A few years ago, bullet journals were all the rage, and my YouTube recommendations certainly reflected that. I would obsessively watch these creators display their flawless monthly spreads, marveling at their skills and perfect themes, wishing I could do the same. And therein lies the problem – having any sort of standard or expectation of your journal. Seeing journaling as something elevated that takes a specific artistic skill, or something I could think about but never actually do, was the very thing holding me back. As a kid, I felt relatively no pressure to do anything, much less journal regularly or even at all. It was simply a bound stack of paper meant to house your thoughts. The idea of “messing up” shouldn’t ever be a part of the equation when it comes to journaling, and yet I had somehow become worried about calligraphy and shading without having even opened a journal or picked up a marker in years. Not to dismiss the concept of organization, but that wasn’t what I was looking for.
The next step was to identify the purpose of a journal. Once I let go of the need to maintain a picture-perfect curation, I was able to see what I truly needed a journal for. I needed a relationship with myself. I needed a place where I could focus on and worry about myself, with no rules or bounds or structure. I needed my own inner world. In the past few years, it had become normal to pull out my phone and open the notes app for silly little things like reminders or lists or scribbles about minutia that I, for whatever reason, wanted to remember. It was simply inconvenient to carry a pen and paper everywhere and taking the time to physically write something down seemed preposterous. But if I couldn’t be bothered to write down things that were ultimately frivolous, how could I expect myself to be able to sit down and write passages of heavy emotion and reflection? How could I be honest with myself? I had to admit that I lost a degree of trust in myself. I didn’t trust that I would be able to communicate my thoughts to myself. I was scared that I would have a thought that I could feel and express so clearly in my head but would be unable to put into physical words. To rebuild that trust, I had to return to my roots and start small.
The only remaining issue was motivation. How do I make journaling a consistent part of my life? While it is true, it’s not very helpful to simply say, “You just have to do it.” I knew I had to make it enjoyable. I would save long, formal entries for when I got comfortable. For the time being, I would stick with what was easy and entertaining, lighthearted and fun to reread.
Here are some of the entries I found most engaging:
- Planning a menu for my dream dinner party.
- Going through my Pinterest saves and describing images that stood out to me. This was an interesting challenge, taking something visual and transcribing it to text. It helped me connect with my artistic tastes, and I think it’s valuable to be able to explain what you identify with aesthetically.
- I’ve allocated a few pages to a few running lists, topics of which include: potential baby names, emojis I wish existed, insane cake flavors I’ve seen on avant-garde Instagram baking accounts, words I think would make cool magazine titles, and places I want to visit and why.
You don’t have to strictly write either! I also love:
- Putting on a song I love at the moment and mindlessly doodling as it plays.
- As a high school architecture student, I loved landscape architecture and garden design, so drawing mini garden plots is a fun creative outlet.
- Trying to (I emphasize trying to) draw portraits of my friends.
Also, a few investments that could improve the process of integrating journaling into your routine:
1. A nice pen. It truly makes all the difference.
2. A tiny little notebook that could fit into any purse. When you always have a journal on you, using it becomes much more habitual.
3. A mini double-sided tape applicator. These are great if you want to make journaling a more tactile experience and incorporate bits of your real world into the pages. You can easily add any scraps of paper, receipts, photos, or anything light and thin enough to adhere to a page into your journal.
It might not feel like you’re doing much, or being particularly profound, writing and drawing things that could seem meaningless. But by committing them to the page, you’re saying that they do, in fact, have meaning. Your thoughts are worth writing and remembering. They are valuable. And as you write more, even if it’s about utter nonsense, you still develop the skill. Your thoughts become clearer, they flow easier, and you feel confident in them. It’s only a matter of time until you feel almost compelled to confide in your journal. You start to write more deeply and emotionally. It gets real. You realize you’re only talking to yourself, and that you have the capacity to listen to yourself. The last thing to remember is that your journal exists only for you. In a sense, it is you. Of course, the bullet journals you see on YouTube and TikTok look perfect – they are made to be viewed. Your personal journal is for you alone, to be kept and held special, for you to reference whenever you need or to look back on in 10 years and reminisce.