July 8, 2024
One of the most consistent fun habits I’ve begun this past year is the keeping of a journal. It’s been a near-crucial tool in sorting out my thoughts, keeping myself organized and healthy, making plans, and in some ways, keeping a routine.
For years and years, journals have been wildly popular on social media as people open theirs up and show off the decorated interiors full of sketches, washi tape, mildlighters, and tidy rows of lists, graphs, and trackers. Or, on the flipside, you can buy or make one that’s simple and has the interior already planned out with calendars and lines for writing lists, but there’s very little “fun” to them, so to speak.
Sure, journaling in these two ways has worked well for many personality types, and it’s no bad thing to use them, but in my personal experience, the artsy journaling style is impractical and time-consuming (albeit a lot of fun), taking me more time to set up my journals than it does to use them, and the premade style made it difficult to tailor to me and my unique and ever-changing lifestyle, leaving too many useless pages and sad, bare sections, or focused on things I didn’t need or care about. In both cases, I didn’t use them enough to form a habit. And so, for years and years, I’ve believed that journals just aren’t for me.
Since I moved out of my parents house in June of 2022, I’ve discovered how difficult it can be to set up a house in a way that makes it a home. It’s hard to make it both beautiful and useful to actually live in! And one thing I’ve been thinking on lately is how to redesign my home to fit the lifestyle of myself and those who live with me. I’d constantly leave dirty laundry on the desk chair in my bedroom instead of the hamper in my closet, or my work bag sitting by the door rather than hanging it on its hook in the coat closet. Mail doesn’t have a place, so it gets tossed on the table until I have a moment to sort through it.
Then I remembered an old screenshot of a Tumblr post I’d read years ago, talking about how, if you always leave your shoes on the left of the door despite the shoe holder being on the right, just move the shoe holder and stop feeling so guilty about always leaving a mess! So that’s what I’ve been attempting to implement in my home. The hamper is by the desk, and I’m looking for a coat tree to put my the front door and a basket for mail to sit in, functionally and decoratively.
The same thought process is being translated to other areas of my life, too, however. Such as with my journaling! I made a list of everything I wanted in a journal:
- small and thin enough to carry around with me, but big enough to not need a new one all the time
- off-white paper so I can write comfortably outdoors in the sun
- leather exterior for pliability and for the adventure it evokes
- removable pages so that it isn’t one-time use, and so that I can organize in different sections without feeling like I’ll run out of space in the section before
- comfortable for my left-handedness to write in (no 3-ring binders or wire-bound notebooks!)
- something that can be drawn/sketched in if I so desire, but also has lines to write
…and then I got to work at finding something, stopping by the journal sections in the local bookstore and at the grocery store, searching through Pinterest and Etsy — and Pinterest didn’t let me down with a listing on Amazon. I discovered traveler’s journals, which almost perfectly suited what I was looking for. Leather exterior, several sizes to choose from, an interior that holds 3 booklets that come in lined, graph, dotted, or blank paper, comfortable to write in, and the paper is off-white.
So that solves the journal itself, tailoring it to suit what I’m looking for. What do I put in it?
I recall reading as a teenager a book for women written by a pastor’s wife who used a journal for everything — from her calendar and schedule, her shopping list, and to-do’s, to her lifelong dreams and any hymns she wrote. In her journal, the first page contained two columns: one that read, “Life Purposes,” and the other, “Life Goals.” Under the heading “Life Purposes” she wrote out what she hoped to be as a person, and under “Life Goals” she put what she hoped to do with her life. Under both columns, she made her list measurable, avoiding any vague descriptions, so as to actually fulfill her lists.
I decided that in my first booklet, I’d copy her to some degree. On my first page, I wrote, “Live Simply,” as that was and is the largest overlapping way to describe my goals, and underneath I wrote things such as, “make bread instead of buying it,” “successfully tend a garden of my own,” “become a wife and mother,” and “memorize Scripture.” It contains all the same information as Life Purposes and Life Goals, and in two columns, but without the headers. This page is my constant reminder. It defines my life goals, and thus defines my journal’s purpose.
Once the first page was written, it became a lot easier to find things to put into the journal.
The first booklet is graph paper, and it contains lists of everything I want to fill my life with. In this section, I wrote things like my life priorities (“Yehovah, Family, Church family, Community+Friends, Work”), my “style analysis” (which I will save for another post on another day), garden plans, the occasional to-do list, what I plan to do with my spiritual gifts, baby names I’d like to use for my children, my wedding guest list, and things that I identify with and enjoy as a part of who I am, such as the moon and constellations, bees, kombucha, sunflowers, music, and my faith.
The middle booklet is lined paper. Inside, I keep a bit of a diary, including poems I write, quotes that resonate with me, sketches, prayers, my favorite Bible verses, and meaningful topics I’d like to discuss with my fiancé before we’re married (and many of them were before I’d agree to get engaged).
The last section is the newest to be organized. It’s blank paper, and before May of this year it contained the most random things, such as more drawings and lists, as I didn’t really know what to do with it. About 6 weeks ago, however, I decided I’d dump all my study notes from the Bible, podcasts, books, and blogs to then create posts to put here, so that when I open my laptop to write, I already have all my notes in one place, and I just pick the topic that I feel compelled to write about!
It keeps my thoughts sorted and organized, and when one booklet fills up, I remove it and put a new one in to continue my thoughts. I copy any still-relevant information from the old booklet into the front of the new one, then feel at ease as I no longer have to keep the old one with its messy pages of scribbles, sketches-gone-wrong, irrelevant lists, and private memories. Its permanence is fleeting, yet it’s useful to me, and serves its purpose well. And at the beginning of the journal, on the front page of the first booklet, is the constant reminder of what I’m aiming for, the target of my life, there to see whenever I open the journal.
While you’re welcome to use whatever style of journal you like, I’ve found that this system — and having a journal in the first place — has been revolutionary for keeping me focused and organized as I continually seek to improve myself and grow in my Elohim. It’s a reminder and container for what those improvements are, and how I’d like to implement them.
I’d recommend keeping one to women and men alike, but make sure you make it your own! I hope that it’s a helpful tool, easy to implement, and beneficial to you in keeping your focus on our Abba and His plan for you.
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