I have a confession to make, and this feels like the time and place to make it.
I’m scared of journaling.
I also have a stationery addiction, the combination of which means I have far too many empty notebooks lying around the house taunting me. There’s nothing more beautiful, and terrifying, than a blank notebook. Page after page of glistening potential that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, I will not live up to.
Why?
My handwriting is atrocious, for one. Notebooks deserve Elizabethan levels of handwriting. They deserve Jane Austen-esque ladies in pastel-colored drawing rooms reflecting on the latest season in perfectly trained script. They do not need my clumsy hand. My handwriting muscles atrophied from the age of twelve, replaced by typing. My sentences don’t follow straight lines, they slant in diagonals. I skip letters. I skip words. There is no consistency. What begins as childlike “best” handwriting quickly descends into the kind of deranged penmanship you’d expect to find scrawled across the wall of a serial killer…
There’s also the general unimportance of my thoughts. If not written in beautiful calligraphy, notebooks deserve to be clutched in the hand of a 1980s investigative journalist, catching twists and turns and breaking developments. Raindrops smudging the words, ink stains forming, crucial details scribbled at pace. They don’t need my Disney Channel-esque petty reflections; they need to be beacons of historical capturing, driving humanity forward.
And then there’s the fact that I can’t stick to anything. The journals that aren’t sitting there empty are sitting there half empty, a constant reminder of fresh starts that fizzled out, new beginnings that fell flat, old habits that point blank refused to die hard.
Surely this is nonsense though. Surely journaling can’t be this pretentious. Paper doesn’t judge handwriting, empty pages don’t insist on cultural significance, notebooks don’t demand to be filled cover to cover.
So what if we just… let all that go? What if we say: “Preconceptions be damned. Self-doubt you have no place here. Judgment you are not welcome.”
What if we create a gentle space where we can explore what happens when we give ourselves permission to journal messily, imperfectly, and exactly as we are. No rules about what time of day you “should” write, no pressure to share unless you want to, no internal voice telling you you’re doing it wrong.
Because here’s the thing – there’s something inside me, a little voice that knows how meaningful it is to just show up with a notebook (any notebook), finding a quiet moment (even a stolen moment), and letting whatever needs to come out, come out.
If you’d like to join me on this Joyful Journaling Journey, all you need is:
- Any notebook that feels right to you
- A corner of your world that feels comfortable
- Permission to do this your own way
I’ll share weekly prompts for those days when your mind feels blank, and we’ll have a bi-weekly virtual space to connect on how you’re finding it if you’d like to.
This isn’t about adding another “should” to your life. It’s about creating a little pocket of time where you can just be. Where your thoughts can wander. Where you can explore what emerges when you give yourself the space to try.
You in?
If so, let me know below. Prompts (that you absolutely do not need to follow) will be added to the Creative Exercises section of the Features page each week, and our check-ins are on the Events page.
Also, join us in the Whatsapp Breakout Group to keep ourselves accountable!
Happy journaling, Revolutionaries!
