your journal is not an instagram, it doesn't have to be pretty and interesting

and you don't have to create a new life to start writing it.

If you come across a girl somewhere on social media who shows or writes about her morning/evening routine, you can be sure that journaling will appear there as a must-do item, no less important than breakfast. Everywhere you don't look, see aesthetically pleasing notebooks, calligraphed headings, neatly labeled pages, important quotes, sketches. Girls carry it everywhere with them, In the photos from the cafe, in addition to a cup of coffee, there must always be a book and their journal.

Probably a lot of you would like to understand this phenom, try it, but still hesitate. I guess that people have a lot of reasons why they procrastinate on starting journaling, even though they are curious about whether it could be for them. I know one of them is that it won't look as pinterest-like as it does in these photos, and their lives aren't interesting enough to write about.

A lot of you are perfectionists, aesthetes, for whom everything is often supposed to be either perfect or not at all. You put it off until you finally buy a nice notebook, or something happens that is worth noting about according to your thinking. I'm like that too, I've always loved to surround myself with beautiful things, and I wish everything I make was perfect from the start.

A year ago, I started doing a course from the book ‘The Artist's Way’ by Julia Cameron aimed at unlocking my creativity and realizing my potential (it worked!). One of the tasks I was given to do to make this happen was to write 3 morning pages every day immediately after waking up. I hadn't read beforehand what exactly the book included, I only knew what it was supposed to theoretically help with. So I didn't know the “morning pages” method yet.

To tell you the truth, my first thought was that I would completely not know what to write about. Of course, I've written before, because I've been writing since forever, I've written diaries, I've written letters (to myself and others), I've often written down memories of the best and worst days that happened to me, because it helped me deal with my emotions, but also to remember what I felt when I was feeling good. However, I wasn't regular about it, on “ordinary” days I just didn't do it. I went back to journaling at those extreme moments when I felt something special was happening - positively or negatively.

You know, 3 pages written after a full day wouldn't be such a problem, I could write about what I did today, what I saw, where I was, who I met, the book I read, the movie I watched and the thoughts I had in the evening. On the other hand, 3 pages written in the morning, when I had just opened my eyes and still had a blank in my head? That could have been a challenge. And that was the point - not to think, not to plan what I would write down, not to write only about what was “interesting.” Just take a pen and let my head itself suggest what to write. I was really surprised that on the very first day I really started to have some thoughts, even if, taking the journal in my hand, I didn't even know what the first word would be. But then from sentence to sentence, my mind knew perfectly well what was sitting deep inside me and what I really needed to talk about.

I also didn't have a “special” journal, something I could show off on Instagram. I had a bit of a thought that the kind of ordinary notebook I found in my desk cabinet would be too “ simple” to carry out such an important process, but I knew that putting it off until I found a journal that was pretty enough would not bring me closer to my goal at all. And it's not that you can't now go and order the most aesthetically pleasing journal you can find online. I myself currently have a lovely notebook that I received as a gift, but the point is that it doesn't have to be extraordinary at all, just because the visual layer is important to others. A simple cover does not take away from the value of the content.

I also recommend that it be handy enough to take with you everywhere. I personally love to write in the journal when I'm at the library, a cafe, a park, on a picnic or while riding the train. I often have important thoughts that then escape my mind, and written down on a piece of paper, they suddenly become even more meaningful. Also, it's exciting to observe people, the view outside the window, the surroundings and just write about it. This helps me a lot later in creating stories.

This is my current journal, it looks like it came from a fairy tale. Often we have this idea that we only have to write about something special in a nice notebook, because otherwise we waste it. My stream of consciousness can be really strange, ugly and chaotic. So it's fun that it has such a fabulous cover, because it hides the fact that the inside is sometimes not so magical and delightful at all.

An essential point in ‘The Artist's Way’ was not to show this journal to anyone (even if the other person is also going through the process), and not to read your previous entries. In retrospect, I can see how meaningful this was. If you know that someone else, someone close to you will look at your notes, after all, they will be completely different. Certainly less personal, expressive, but also instead of on your emotions and thoughts, you will focus on not writing anything stupid, offensive, to, well, write about something. About something interesting, important, profound. Because what will the second person think when he or she sees that these three pages of yours are simply records of the fact that you've eaten warm cereal with milk today, you're cold on your feet and all in all, you don't even know why you're doing it? And if you start reading what you wrote yesterday or a week ago, won't you start judging yourself? You'll think to yourself that you're boring, bland and don't write about anything deep, so there's no point in doing it.

And you can really do it for many different reasons, and you don't have to write only when you skydive or do something equally impressive that is worth bragging about. Why? Because not every day of your life will be as exciting, and that's perfectly normal. Practically no one's life is like that. Sometimes you'll write about the fact that you had a fight with a friend, and sometimes that there's fresh bread waiting for you for breakfast. And then you'll find that from each of these thoughts a thousand different other thoughts will suddenly arise, because you'll need to get something off your chest, and you'll have the space to do it. It's a good way to work through things you've been holding deep inside.

This is your personal journal about your life, you don't have to try to make it more interesting, to make “something happen.” You don't have to wait to be able to write something. Believe, I already have several such diaries saved (I write every day) and it's great to read even such entries that one day the sky was orange-blue and that coffee with nut milk tastes better. It's much better than if I had 1 entry from the whole month in my diary, because only then something “worth remembering” was happening. I think that in a few years, when you reach for this journal, every day, every thought and every entry will be something worth writing about.

You don't have to try to make it pretty. You can write ugly, you can swear, it does not have to be written poetically, aesthetically, as if taken out of a book. You can write in it about worse emotions and bad experiences and your frustrations, anger, rage, sadness, disappointments. Why should you? Because it can help you cope with what happened, you give an escape to your emotions, instead of keeping them inside, you can pour them out of you on paper, write everything that sits in your head, literally everything, because only you will read it anyway. You can write what you'd like to say to someone else, but then you'll regret it, so you'd rather do it in your diary first. You know what gives me a lot? When, after time, I read this entry and realize that this issue no longer has any meaning for me, I gave it more power than it actually had. And I realize that the current problems are also so huge because I make them so. And soon it will happen to them what it did to its previous ones - they will mean nothing. It also helps me calm down and realize that I am alive.

Carry it with you, or at least make writing in it in the morning/evening your daily ritual. Write about your plans, your shopping list, the strangers you saw today, the conversations you had, the favorite things you tried, the new places you discovered, the weather, the new song you discovered, the fact that your favorite ice cream flavor doesn't taste so good anymore, or that the train was stuffy and crowded. Write about situations you experienced, why they made you happy, why they went wrong, what you would like to change if you could. Write about ideas for your stories, poem, book, plot, characters, associations that help inspire you. Write about the art you consumed this week to make it easier for you to remember everything. Review recent movies, books, dishes you ate at a restaurant. Write down the watchword of the month and the most important sentence you heard this week. Not everything has to be deep and thoughtful.

Sketch it, embellish it, underline it. Paste in train tickets, movie tickets, concert tickets, stickers, stamps, dried flowers, leaves, photos, whatever you can find. Or leave it blank, with just your words.

You can be there melodramatic about silly things, annoyed, inspired, pissed off at the whole world, excited about things that to others will be something small. You can write a whole post about how you ate a peanut butter sandwich today and it was the absolute best so far.

Amazing how journaling stimulates our imagination and develops that inner artist of ours. Today, we don't have the verve to create our story, poem, blog post, but we still don't stop writing because we write in a journal.

It's a diary, not an instagram. There are no likes there, no comments, no one will see it, rate it and repost it. You don't have to try to find a good filter, you don't have anyone to impress there, you don't have to think “is it aesthetic enough” and will it be consistent with the rest. No one will stop following you because you wrote about something boring or annoying. You won't be embarrassed that you poured out all your frustrations in emotion or wrote about something really personal. There is no one else there. All that's left is you, your journal and your mind.

So take a pen and notebook and just write whatever comes to your head without judging yourself or your thoughts. Share your observations on this topic. Thank you for subscribing and reading. Find me on tiktok, instagram, pinterest and tumblr.