It’s a question I just read on our Reddit cousin sub Journaling that’s worth sharing, imho.

The op seems to be concerned by the fear of the blank page and also seems to have a hard time expressing their emotions in written form.

Is it something that intimidates you too?

To avoid being intimidated by any new notebook, I have made it a habit to ruin its first page. Either by making some stupid drawing on it, or by staining it with ink. Like, literally staining the page.

Illustration

Here is the first page of my current journal (left) and previous one (right). One is mere stains and scratchy nibs. The other is written in French and it reads ‘Tuesday, 28th May 2024’ (I only write the full date on the very first entry of a journal) ‘To finish—therefore to start a journal’ and next to this very deep thought I did a sketch of the XLR plug of my microphone that was lying on my desk.

Now, why should I care about ‘damaging’ my pretty journal? It’s already a mess. And I find that incredibly liberating.

Have you ever done that? Or what else do you do to avoid the ‘fear of the blank page/new notebook’? Or you simply don’t care and start writing?

As for actually writing stuff in the journal, like I mentioned previously), the simplest thing I can think of is to write down the day and the date, plus some tidbits of info I value keeping. I may or may not write more below those snippets, and I may or may not do it every single day either. It doesn’t matter.

I have no set rule if I shall write in the morning to recap the previous day, or summarize the day right before I go to bed. Or write at any specific time in between.

What about you? Do you have any rules?

Lastly, what about writing down emotions? That’s very personal, obviously.

The key point to keep in mind regarding the way I journal is that I don’t care much about writing well in my journal. It’s not a novel or some paper I want anyone else to read. It’s merely a collection of short and random notes about what happens around me, or in my head, I want to remember or reflect upon. So, I try to write them as they pop in my head. Well, it’s a tad more nuanced than that but it would take much longer to explain and maybe it’s worth discussing in its own thread?
What do you say?

… and how do you journal about your emotions, if at all?

  • Libb@jlai.luOPMEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    First off: nice seeing action in this sub! And a really nice post - I like the random sketch and aquarell in there.

    Thx!

    You make a lot of interesting points/questions. By all means, do not hesitate to use them to open new discussions if you ever feel like it. Hopefully, it will encourage others around here to share their own experience and questions.

    this is already started, might as well write something down“ mindset probably is a good start.

    What I can say is that it has worked fine for me, so far ;)

    I‘ve got that weird problem hanging around that I do not know what format I prefer… digital for easy access and archival? Blank notebook for the freedom? Calendar for the structure?

    And then I do not start, because I am not decided on a medium. But I cannot decide on a medium because I haven’t started.

    It’s not that weird and without taking too much risks, I think can say most of us can relate. It has bothered me for years, no, for decades.

    What’s great is that you’re not completely stuck. I mean, you can decide to test one medium for a short period of time to see how well it works (while doing so, it’s best to completely ignore the alternatives, imho). Then uoi will know what could be improved and how, or if it just sucks. That’s how I generally try new things.

    And the work you may have put in during that test will not be lost:

    • Analog? You can scan your entries and make a PDF out of them, using nothing but a phone.
    • Digital? Most apps should allow to print the entries or with any luck to export them into some usable format that you can then use to make nicer pages before printing them.

    What can’t be done is scan or print a non-written journal, no matter it’s format ;)

    (BTW, that’s how I left DayOne: I exported my entries into one huge PDF file. I had been using DO since it was first introduced, years before it become a subscription-based app, so there were a lot of entries. The page layout of their exported PDF is rather meh, I have hoped for years they would give us more export options, or at least various layouts to choose from, but they never did. It’s still readable though.

    Just flipping through it and from some words or lines of text suddenly vividly remembering a day or event from your past is awesome.

    This, 100%. And that’s the main reason I wanted to try ‘revitalize’ this community. Keeping and then re-opening a journal can be such a unique experience—not always an easy or a comfortable experience, but an enriching one. Even more so when done on the (very) long run… Even when switching between various media ;)

    Currently I‘m keeping the „remembering“ and „reflection“ separate

    That’s a neat idea. Something I should try as I always find my pages messy with too many different types of texts. Not sure I could keep a clear separation, though.

    Thx for commenting!