BEGINNER'S TIPS

It's common for many people to want to start a journal, but often times, they see it as an inaccessible hobby because they don't know how to journal or they can't keep up with journaling every single day and get discouraged. So I wanted to provide a few tips for beginners on my website in hopes that it will help others begin the valuable art of journaling! Disclaimer: I recognize that journaling does not help everyone positively, but I believe that journaling is something that everyone should consider worth trying at the very least.

1) Figure out why you want to journal.

Do you want to journal to keep a physical log of what you experience day to day? Or do you want to journal to reflect on your own emotions and thoughts? Maybe you want to journal to have some kind of punching bag to make a mess out of, pasting all sorts of junk and doodling and wrecking your notebook as much as you want. It's good to have a central goal in mind when it comes to journaling, as you'll always have that goal as a starting base when facing a blank page.

For me, I journal to keep track of my emotional growth. I often like to read back on my old journals so I can feel better about how far I've come. I write about good and bad things that have happened to me, and I also write stream of consciousness about my worries and anxieties in hopes that writing myself down this spiral will also get me out of it. If I don't feel like writing words, I spam pages with a bunch of stickers and washi tape instead as a way of doing arts and crafts for stress relief.

2) You don't need to build a habit of it.

People believe that if they fail to write in their journal every single day, then it's a hobby that's not worth keeping. I disagree with that notion! I've had years where I've journaled every single day, and I've had years where I've gone several weeks or even months without writing in my journal. Even now, I've been so pre-occupied with life and other hobbies that I've been going several months without journaling. Even so, I still decide to keep writing in my journal when I feel like it.

Don't feel discouraged that there are large time gaps between entries. My top tip to address this is to avoid starting a new journal whenever you've gone a long time without journaling. I like to purchase nice notebooks with great paper to avoid doing this. That way, I think, "This notebook's paper is too nice to abandon it!" and write a new entry in it, even when the previous entry was from several months ago or even several years ago. Play catch up with your current journal whenever this happens! Talk to it as if you're having coffee with an old friend, telling them about what went on in your life since you've last seen them.

3) When in doubt, take a prompt.

Sometimes, you'll face a blank page in your journal and not know what to write. When that happens, feel free to browse the Internet for writing prompts until one inspires you. For sake of ease, my website also has a page that provides a list of 1000 writing prompts you can certainly use.

4) You don't even have to write words in your journal.

Junk journaling has become a common trend among journalers these days. If you don't feel like actually writing in your journal, consider gluing or taping any ephemera you came across that day. Have a receipt from the grocery trip you took that day? Tape it into your journal. Have a food wrapper or a ticket stub from a show you attended? Paste it in there.

Even though you haven't technically written anything that day, your journal will still be able to tell a brief story of what you did that day.

5) Confront your goals from time to time.

It's totally acceptable to change your intentions with journaling, especially as time passes. Originally, I started journaling because I wanted to keep a physical log of my college career. I wanted to have a book that reflected on the highs and lows of my own experience as a college student. My first journal was a bullet journal actually, so it really was moreso a hybrid of a planner and a journal in one.

Now that I'm in my mid-twenties with a full-time job, I re-assessed what I wanted out of journaling. Now, for me, it's less about memory keeping and more about thoughtful reflection and creative expression. As I get older, the more I find reflecting on my thoughts and beliefs more valuable.

So if your initial goal with journaling is no longer working for you, confront that goal and re-adjust. It's perfectly reasonable to change what you want from your journal, and don't feel guilty for deciding to completely change the style in which you journal.

6) Don't censor unless it's unsafe otherwise.

The downsides of a growing journaling community on social media is... well... the social media aspect. On Instagram, and even on Reddit, you'll find countless pictures of pretty-looking journal entries that look absolutely intimidating to beginners and aspiring beginners both. For those who want to mimic that style, they may hesitate towards what they want to write and consider censoring themselves instead. Do not do this. In the end, journaling should be a personal experience and you should never feel obligated to share a single entry to the public.

Write freely, because journaling should be done to benefit you, not others. However, I recognize that some journalers may live in an unsafe environment where their journals are often read by other parties against their will and are punished for the contents inside. In this case, rather than fully censoring yourself to protect yourself, consider using a cipher code instead to encrypt your entries. Another idea is to write short mundane entries in a dummy journal kept in an obvious hiding place for the other parties to find, while keeping your actual journal in a more conspicuous hiding place.

7) Stop worrying about making it pretty, damn it.

Again, do not let social media intimidate you. It's unfortunate how social media has become so discouraging towards beginner creatives, and how it's prevented a considerable amount of people from feeling okay with the fact that they're at a beginner's skill level.

With that in mind, don't worry about making your journal entries pretty. If it helps you or you genuinely have fun with making your journal pretty, then go wild! Have fun with it! But for those who simply want to write walls of text and nothing else, your method of journaling is just as valid as long as it continues to benefit you and/or make journaling accessible to you.

8) Do whatever the fuck you want. It's your journal.

Above all else, do whatever you want with your journal. These tips were meant to help making the hobby of journaling as accessible as possible to others, but you can still choose to ignore these tips and do whatever the hell you want. In the end, the journal is yours. There's no wrong way to journal.