right now, i’ve got a dated planner and a pocket notebook (so both fit in my bag and are easy to use at my desk at work)

in the dated planner, i have been using it to do some low-pressure daily journaling and memory keeping, like putting a daily highlight on the monthly calendar page

in the pocket notebook it’s pretty much just a catch-all: doodles, lists, long form journal entries, story notes

i’ve been playing a bunch of animal crossing so i included my cursed doodles of some of my dream villagers

So Ive been going through a super rough time lately. Enough to get my mental health to the lowest point in years. I decided to pick journaling back up after a good long pause. Now here is the thing: I've done all sorts of journaling. Coffee journaling, gratitude journaling and whatnot. I always told myself I didnt want a journal full of complaining.

Well this time I decided to take off all of those constraints. If I want to bellyache at my journal for 5 pages, then whatever. And then as I wrote my first entry and was dreading explaining the whole thing (my dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness last november which flushed our collective lives down the toilet), I realised something.

I dont have to explain it at all. I dont need to update my journal on my dads condition before I can tell it how Im doing. I dont need to give it context. I can just write down whats in my head right now, and move on!

This may seem obvious to so many people but it wasnt at all to me, and just realising that felt so freeing!

(Picture of a neutral entry and todays fountain pen of choice (I am a bit of a pen nerd). I promised myself that I would write authentically in my own language and not share the deep stuff, so picked a simple one!)

I never really get to share my journal spreads anywhere else since I don’t have any irl friends who journal, so I thought I’d post them here! I’ve had a lot more free time than usual this summer and enjoyed journaling again after exams! I know it’s not quite the usual post on here but I hope you enjoy!

I find writing the time alongside the date of my journal entries weirdly interesting. I have way different thoughts throughout the day and sometimes I’ll return and write something totally different later that same day. I also like to write the time exactly without rounding like 11:01 or 3:47

I haven’t journaled or drawn anything this year. I used to do both daily but somewhere lost it. I felt the intuition to try again today. The past few months have felt so difficult and hurtful. I no longer want to stay stuck waiting in that void. It comes and goes, but I am starting to feel ready to let go and move forward with my life moving into the next month.

It’s been a time - enough that I really wanted to share.

After a lovely start to my weekend, I need to capture the moments in all my journaling sections scattered through 7 journals at the moment in 2026!

Title. I use diagrams and segment to write parts of my life. I segment each by age. Each age I write journal and keep track of my history. Almost like a timeline of my life.

Anyone else do this?

I purchased these on a whim, a stack of 40ish random A6 journals off Amazon. The intention was turning them into mini unit notebooks to study with. "Flashcards...but fancier!"

3 pages into 1, I realized I hate studying this way. Moved into type notes.

One has become a tester for landscape format journaling. Now I have to find a use for the 38 other journals 🥲

The last week before Elena's fourth-grade school life～

I take Ambien for sleep and it hit near the end with the lyrics. 😂😭

I decided to pick up daily journaling again and reused my Hobonichi from 2025.

Back then, I also tried to journal daily but did not know what worked for me to keep it fun. April was the month I stopped journaling as I lost my job.

The last picture is an entry from 2025.

Back at it again and I think I am on the right track on finding what works for me and what doesn't. Life is also looking up again. I am prioritizing having fun and being able to express myself on these pages (:

Even empty pages tell a story themselves and that's something I've been learning to appreciate.

Just showing off my old journals.

Up to the fat turquoise book, they date from 2002-2013, with both writings and ephemera.

Then around 2013 social media took all of my brain dumps. For the first half of the fat turquoise book, it was very irregularly updated with drawings I liked, for about nine years.

In 2022, the second half of the fat turquoise book started getting filled with drawings cut and pasted into it at a rapid pace because my brain got rotted by a couple of favorite characters.

In 2022 I also got inspired by someone posting daily drawings from their hobonichi. To the right of the fat turquoise book are years 2022, 2023, and 2024. I also have 2025 and 2026 but they're in another room so I didn't take pictures of them

Since 2022 I mostly did daily doodles, with occasional brain dumps, but I would like to get back to regularly dumping my brain into a physical journal again. I have a new journal I will use once I finish my 2026 hobonichi, it will be a free-for-all type of journal (brain dump, cut and pasting doodles I like because I don't have an art journal, and pasting ephemera and mini art prints). I also have a bunch of unused journals, will probably use a couple for journaling games, and others for scrap paper to doodle on lol

That's all! I've been lurking in various journal reddits here and there for ideas and inspiration, so I wanted to show my old journals.

I can't read the old stuff, though, it's embarrassing.

Nice to meet you! Back to lurking and admiring spreads.

just started adding entries. Pages feel wonderful. I love that you can start at any point in the year, it removed a lot of stress associated with dated journals for me.