I had on and off periods of journaling in various physical and digital mediums, and yes, I'm including the private twitter account. (so glad I got rid of that, but also sad that I lost some of the records of that time. those drafts were wild)

But in my early twenties, I barely journaled. Only past 25 I gave it a second shot out of desperation, on notes apps and whatnot. While it was all cool and useful dumping with a keyboard, I didn't really have a romance for the process to fully draw me back to journaling. I was treating it as a "break in case of emergency" tool. But recently, I rediscovered how much I love the feeling of pen to paper. I'm pretty tactile it seems!

One thing I love about this hobby is how personal and unique is for everybody. I probably spent hours looking and hearing how people do it themselves. I also wanted to write a little window into my own journey.

origins

Ah my "dear diaries" of youth... I have all my high school and earlier journals stashed somewhere at my parent's house, with the little locks and hello kitty stickers and all. Looking back at it, child me had it so right from the start. I was writing every little thing that happened in the day, how I felt at school, my latest obsession, and doodles of warrior cats, I guess. (lol I think I recorded the day I met my husband too! speaking of, we have a sappy ass scrapbook of our early years until we moved in together. I'm now realising for how long I've been journaling, wtf...)

But one day I got Serious about it. I used to have a big fockoff A5 hardcover journal like all the bullet journal girlies did in 2015, and bullet journal I did. It was pretty useful, but looking back at it, the spreads I was making weren't fit for my life and interests. Also, carrying a heavy A5 was easier when I always had a school backpack, but going into university I dropped the habit altogether.

I had some attempts at restarting a bullet journal, but they never went anywhere, and tasks sat sad and unticked. Only years later I'd realise that the form factor was really, really important when it came to actually using the damn notebook, and also, why was I using this???

The whole point of the bullet journal is rapid logging and burning through the tasks, or letting go of them altogether. I was getting myself confused with treating it as a loose dumping ground and a productivity system that didn't fit any of my internal concept of time. (weekly planning? hell yes. monthly? i suck at it)

Last year I went back to Ryder Carroll's book on the og method, keeping it as minimal as possible for the first months until I got back into it. I took what worked and left behind what didn't, but the core concepts stayed the same: set an intention, daily logging, migrate tasks. The reflection part however... I soon discovered it sat better outside my bullet journal.

planning vs reflecting

For my easily distractible brain, it's too confusing to have my day's commitments next to random shiny new ideas, or some upsetting vent next to a house chore. As much as I loved the idea of an all-in-one book, I discovered I needed a divide between planning and reflecting. These are entirely different mind states for me.

I went back to the dear diary approach, which put me a bit more in touch with myself than just churning out stuff to do. I am pretty fond of some of the thoughts that have come out when I gave myself time to write, and I can appreciate even more having a recording of my life at a certain time. No wonder I was feeling like going nowhere when I wasn't logging anything, I can barely remember what I did last week.

I still keep a small bullet journal around for actually doing things, but having two distinct physical spaces was pretty key to actually stick to a journaling routine. But I also found out about morning pages, which really cemented my excitement to write every day.

morning pages

In case you haven't heard, these are having a bit of a comeback online. It's pretty simple, basically "fill up 3 pieces of paper every morning". This is a concept initially popularised by The Artist's Way book by Julia Cameron, which I've tried reading 2 months into doing morning pages. I uh, couldn't finish the book, sorry! That's for another day to explain. The pages themselves are more important.

I've been keeping up this morning pages habit for hmm... about 5 months now? The only reason this has been so consistent is that I fill three B7 pages, which are pretty small and manageable, and I try to fit them in whenever I have time in the day, but I still call them "morning pages". I also like that this has a well-defined "win condition" for the day. It takes about 30 mins to call it done, and I swear it's been so good for my self-awareness.

I don't want to impose any ideas of how these pages should be treated. You can do absolutely anything you want with these, like some people don't even write but doodle instead, or write on the same page over the same words thrice. I want to share how I've been doing mine, just keep in mind there isn't a set way on doing them, if you want to try as well.

My guidelines are pretty similar to what's in the book:

• 3 full pages (ideally) every day
• do NOT re-read what you just wrote. nothing gets a re-read until it "cools off", which is usually 2 months later
• follow the stream of consciousness, write without any censoring

The 3 full pages and no re-read seem to be the special sauce here. One cool side-effect I noticed for the 2 month cool-off: fresh ideas usually take shape or are resolved by the time I do my re-read. A lot of the worries and questions I had end up revisited in the current time, with better clarity on how to solve them. I like to think that if I'm giving them space to spawn in these little pages, they become part of my inner landscape and my subconscious gets to work on them, without feeling weighted-down by them. They're left on the paper already!

This was so helpful for so many things in my life: my emotions, relationships, career, projects, energy management... basically I don't have any guardrails around the themes I approach in my morning pages. Some days, I write about what happened, others I'm full on bitching about something nagging me, others I have to gush about some Big emotions, or figure out a fic plot point, and most of them are random nonsense, which may or may not foreshadow my life later on. you never know! that's half of the fun for me.

bookbinding the journals

I'm also pretty crafty, I've always been as a kid. I dabbled into bookbinding during the pandemic, and bound some sketchbooks at the time. I was burning through sketchbooks then because, you know, isolation... This was a fun past time AND I had pretty damn good sketchbooks for cheap. They look a bit wonky, but they're still holding up on my shelves somewhere.

Having gone years of forgetting what a journal is, I had a lot of frustrations with no place to go, so I was boiling myself from the inside. I think I was trying a bunch of random self-help crap to depressurise, but I was ruminating too hard for any of those to help me. I went back to the basics and dumped on a blank piece of paper. It was messy. I wanted to keep the paper around, thinking it'd make me feel better once things looked sunnier for me, but I didn't want anyone to read it. I think I ended up throwing it away, but I bound a little notebook with some shitty paper for this purpose, so I'd know I'd stash it well and bring it out when needed.

But I actually liked how it turned out? And it still had a wonkiness, the binding had the pages sliding around, so I wasn't worried about messing it up with some cringe writing. It soon became a place to brainstorm ideas for my then-upcoming game, but I also wrote about recipes, priorities, things I was reading or watching, and I also found my love for stream of consciousness writing in this. It was a pretty slim A6 so I ended up bringing it along with me wherever, writing whatever I had in mind. I made quite a few of those, until I changed up my "system".

Now I'm burning through pocket notebooks. I'm specifically making my own morning pages notebooks by hand, since I have a very particular setup for them:

• enough pages to fit a month's worth of writing, so ~96 pages
• B7 grid paper that feels nice to write on and fits in one of my covers (I buy loose leaves of this for cheap and cut it down)
• make it not too fancy, so I don't end up feeling too precious over them. some really weird shit ends up on these pages

I do a pamphlet stitch on the pages with some embroidery floss, and make a cover out of kraft paper. I can say I got better at binding!

Here's some of my handmade journals, which are also a good excuse to use up my stickers. I have too many.

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bonus: supplies

in case you're curious. (obligatory "not sponsored" disclaimer)

Pens:

• Zebra Sarasa 0.5 - ough I love a good gel pen. These are my favourites. I like the little clip and the barrel shape, they're my daily drivers. I started with the 0.7 which is also nice, but a bit too juicy and smeary on some of my papers. I love the vintage colours, I'm switching them up every month :')
• Uniball Uni One 0.38 - sleek and smooth, I hated thin line pens until I got this one. I kept the barrel and I'm using Muji 0.38 gel refills inside of it, which are comparable.

Paper:

• Kokuyo Campus B5 Sarasara loose leaf (grid) - this is the nicest paper I've ever written on. It really helps with my tactile-ness, being ultra smooth. I can't find this anywhere locally though :/
• Muji B5 loose leaf (grid) - I can buy this cheaper, I can find it pretty easily in the city, and it feels really nice with my pens. I've got the ring cover for it too, and I love moving the pages around. I use this to make my morning page journals too.
• Leuchtturm pocket-sized soft-cover journal (dot grid) - I like the form factor, I use this as my daily planner and log. I want to switch to the jottbook version though, as it's slimmer and easier to slip in a pocket and I don't need the elastic band (I've made an elastic-bound cover for it, kinda like a bootlegged traveller's notebook)

bonus: links

some youtube channels that have inspired me:

• struthless - i think he was my catalyst to journaling when shit was going down in my life. lovely channel all throughout that keeps it real, a lot of useful journaling prompts and thoughts on self-improvement that are more authentic than what you'd usually find. also, nifty video essays! i love how unchained his creativity is.
• john rogers' notebook - knew of him from his books on london, i also share a fondness for my city with him. i found out about morning pages through his video on them. i love his thoughts on stationery and notetaking on the go. he seems to be posting some videos on his writing process lately, which i find interesting to hear
• rachelle in theory - super practical advice on "thinking on paper" and task systems. i managed to build my own planning system/routine with a lot of her tips, and i think i'm closer to balancing the breadwinning and self-care and fun sides of my life thanks to her. i love it whenever she mentions she plots her fics in her notebooks. sameeeee

I would've linked to videos too, but I think it's better for you to pick what interests you. That's how I've been using youtube lately: the unhook extension hides all the recommended crap, and I'm going on specific channels and picking something I'd want to see. intentional browsing, baby!!!!!!