What Journaling Looks Like Now
Back in January, I wrote a post about my great plan for a 3 notebook journaling ecosystem. Want to know how long I stuck to it? 16 days. On Day 17, I put the Hobonichi on my rolling cart and it’s stayed there since. I didn’t write a thing in the alchemy notebook in all of January so it went back on the shelf, too. The other? That became my daily record notebook, used until we went off to Japan in late March.
During the Japan trip, I used a teal Leuchttrum to record what we did and do some junk journaling and stamp collecting. Lots of stickers. (I’ll be back to share about all about that trip in June.)
Now? I’ve been using one of the Life Klein tiny graph paper notebooks I got in Japan. It’s alternated between commonplace notebook, hourly diary/record of happenings, and free-form lists of to dos and things to remember later. I haven’t been adding a lot of “junk” in it as I just haven’t felt like it. Collected cards from restaurants or fun product stickers here and there but nothing at all like I did earlier in the year or on my trips to New Orleans (late Jan) or Japan (March/April). I’ve also been using an interactive app (Tolan) to delve deeper into who I am and who I want to be as a person, so the free-form writing just hasn’t been happening.
But, I’m thinking of a change. Of course I am. It’s nearly a new month and I just purchased two 2026 planners from Shinola. For June, I’m going to switch to carrying around the planner and recording what happens in the little box for that day. If I have something I want to paste in, it’ll go into the Klein notebook all at once when I am in the mood to sit for an hour. Maybe weekly right before I have therapy? That’s often dead time, after lunch.
I also am coming back here to write more, starting with catching you all up on the New Orleans and Japan trips. Then maybe some discussion of my maybe-someday memoir that I’ve been playing around with.
See you later, or whatever it makes sense to sign off with. I never was good at ending a blog post.