What journaling "every day" looks like
I believe in your New Year's goals
I’m writing this post from the liminal space between Christmas Day and New Year’s, a time when I get to take a breath and reflect on what I learned and accomplished creatively and personally in the past year, and what I’d like to learn and accomplish in the next. I love this time of year. I love the quiet after the holiday rush, and I love the break in routine that lets me get excited to get back to my routine.
Last year, I started habits to support my New Year’s resolutions over Christmas vacation, and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. My big goal for 2023 was to journal every day, and getting into the daily habit over my two-week-ish vacation set me up for the entire year.
I wanted to talk about this specific goal because I think it illustrates what New Year’s resolutions and goals can look like in a concrete way. I did not journal every single day of 2023, even though “journal every day” was my resolution/goal in a literal sense. But you know what? I wrote in my journal on most days, something like six out of every seven days, or sometimes even 13 out of every 14 days, and it was a huge leap forward for me. I’ve been keeping journals for almost 20 years, and I’d never been able to get myself to write regularly before.
So what was different?
I found the tool that worked for me.
I spent some time thinking about my (lack of) journaling habits, and I realized my best journaling year was helped by a specific ruled notebook that let me think of my day in terms of daily progress and lists. I also knew I wanted to stop losing my thoughts in too many notebooks, and I had to be able to write in the margins to make my notes to myself more accessible. I found the exact notebook that I needed to make my journaling habit easy and straightforward and to make my entries more useful to my future self.
I stopped overthinking it.
I used to think that journaling was useless unless I was completely documenting my life every day. This year, I realized more than ever that these entries are only for me, and I can write whatever is helpful for me to write that day. Sometimes a journal entry is a long, detailed reckoning of the day and all my thoughts and feelings, but it can also look like many different things:
A list (of goals, of resources for creative inspiration, of newsletter ideas, of movies I want to watch — anything!)
A quick paragraph about the thing I most want to remember from that day
A check-in with a few notes about each aspect of my creative life: what I’m writing and how I feel about it, the books I’m reading, the progress I made practicing at the rink that day, etc.
A sentence. Sometimes, it’s been a long day or a big day and I’m not ready to write all about it yet. Writing one sentence summing it up still counts as journaling for that day.
I didn’t obsess over “the streak.”
Sure, it was nice having that time at the beginning of the year when I knew I’d written in my journal every single day. But eventually, I missed a day. I don’t remember when or why, and it doesn’t matter. What’s important to me is that I show up most of the time. I’m not losing the thoughts and ideas and moments and days that are important to me. I can say I journal “every day” and add a nice asterisk after it because that’s what’s working for me right now.
I hope you’ve made a New Year’s resolution or set a big goal for this year. I hope you’re having a great time planning out exactly how to make it happen. 2024 is shaping up to be a big year for me, but while I’m excited for upcoming milestones, I know life is really about daily moments of progress. May you find the best small ways to make your big goals happen.
Happy New Year, and as always, thanks for reading.