It’s been a while since I update my blog, but I’ve been writing in my journal. I revived the habit of journaling last year. While I can’t say that I write every single day, at least I’m able to do it on most days.
Yes, I know journal means “daily.” Despite the fact that I only get to write on most days, the habit has been helping me see the good things, the little things that I’m happy about or thankful for. It’s usually small things these days, especially because of the pandemic and the local scenario where our number of cases aren’t really dwindling.
Most of the time, my pages would only contain what I consider as the basic things:
- my food intake
- if I exercised or not
- things that I’m happy about or thankful for
They normally fit in one page on my ring binder and that’s enough for me. Unless I’m feeling particularly strong emotions or pondering deep thoughts that day, I probably only have those three things in bullet lists.
Journaling for me is an activity that I tend to do in the beginning of the day and/or at the end of it. I don’t want to overthink it most of the time and if I skip a day, I tell myself it’s fine. Maybe it’s gotten easier to think of it that way because I’m using ring binders again. Ring binders make it easier to move pages around.
Another thing that I enjoy about journaling these days is that I’ve been using stickers and washi tape to come up with page layouts. Sometimes the page layouts reflect my mood at the time I’d be making them. Sometimes I just play around with stickers, tapes, scrap paper that I could find. There’s a joy in turning random old magazine pages with some notepads and stickers as my writing page.
I’ve encouraged some friends online to give journaling a try too. I find that I’m not alone in enjoying the act of writing down thoughts, ideas and feelings. And these days, I don’t feel pressured to always have “pretty pages.” I used to think that journaling should have a certain look and feel, but these days, I spend time just getting random tapes, stickers and papers then I tell myself, “Come up with something using these.” They’re not pretty half the time, but one thing’s for sure is that they’re mine and I find comfort in that.
Clair Colors 