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?

  • frosch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    18 days ago

    First off: nice seeing action in this sub! And a really nice post - I like the random sketch and aquarell in there. Having this „this is already started, might as well write something down“ mindset probably is a good start.

    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.

    Besides that, I have made it a „Todo“ to at least write down the most important things of this day in the evening or next morning. Because for me, a journal is a beautiful thing to remember about past times.

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

    Writing about emotions? That’s a an interesting question. Currently I‘m keeping the „remembering“ and „reflection“ separate: In a calendar, I have the events and random thoughts of a day and in a separate journal, I try to just clobber down trains of thoughts and emotions as they occur to me.