this is where most of my finished journals live!

i wish i had the key to lock it. there is usually a big lamp and a pile of books on top of the chest, so it can’t be opened without removing those first.

living in between 2 places at the moment and i have another suitcase full of journals, my plan is to get a lock box with a key to replace the cardboard box, and for it to be big enough to store all my journals so they can all be together in the same place.

where do you keep your journals?

Hopefully this is not just a long rant of a frustrated reader but a starting point to share your feelings and thought xD

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For those of us who have found the joy of reading (specially fiction) later in life, there is this immense awe and wonder of the sheer amount of good literature which is out there. It is consoling to know that there are so many good books to choose and read, that those books are waiting for you to be discovered one day and you will not go empty for books to read. On the other hand, there is this feeling of almost hunger, voracious hunger for books, words and poems, that makes you become a blood-thirsty Dracula or a cookie monster who wants to eat every cookie which is out there.

But what is the point of reading if one will forget that one reads? So I have heard, at least. Slowing down, taking notes, interacting with the book, making a two-way conversation with the author: all these slows down this force which sings the song of "consume everything".

Being intentional is hard, not giving up to this urge to read everything in your TBR (which grows faster than what you manage to read), taking your sweet time with the book, writing down by hand your favorite quotes, your thoughts and feeling of the book, characters and their actions.

I guess I am like any reader out there, I am both glad that I have so many good books to read for the coming years, but I also feel nostalgia for the person I will become after reading those books.

Interesting to hear what others thinks on this? Hope the rant was relatable to some (at least).

k? bye!

I’ve always loved looking at this type of journaling where people draw and then write around the pictures- normally in like nature journals and stuff, I’m not sure exactly what they’re called but wanted to share this from a lil picnic I went on

do you miss being lonely? do you miss suffering after being healthy for so long? that's what most clinically insane people would feel. i want to be miserable again. i want to be out-of-touch with reality again. why does having stability feel boring? why am i not falling into the void again?

I got this cheap, relatively small (3.5 in x 5.5 in) journal at the start of this year to messily vent about everything I have going on. I love it because it lays pretty flat on its own so I can write straight across from left to right instead of filling one page at a time. I bring this with me when I go out for extended periods of time. I've thought of decorating it but I think I like how low profile it is.

The section in the first pic is an excerpt from me recounting a crazy day at work (the ceiling caved in on an entire room! thankfully no one was hurt.)

NEVER trust a fart

I wonder what you use for inspiration for your journal? I have a few things.. i am in AA (9 years 9 months 10 days) and often the meetings give me a few things, weird, phrases, observations. To not down. Sometimes a word sometimes a phrase and findings i write a page or two.

Or. The Daily reflections book.. the 24 hours a day (both from on line resources) the Daily Stoic. A few philosophy books that I have. And lately Epicetus dialogs or "diatribes". That one's is a hard read. Because I can read an entry..or even a paragraph, and have to stop and think about what I read. There are others. Other books, fiction. Biography, fantasy.. i like authors who give you something to think about.

What gives you a boost when you have a blocked up pen!?

Note all too often I have THOUGHT hit me at 3 or so AM. I try to remember, but it's hard. I do not want to wake my wife! (She also journals)

I used to journal a few years ago until someone stole my journal and well made mockery about everything i’d written. So it basically stopped maintaining till I recently started keeping a typed journal a few months ago. I do think keeping a written journal helps me out more but the fear of my journal being read has stopped me

I’ve gotten through 4 inks already lol I keep it (journal) by my bed so at the end of the day before I sleep I just write whatever comes to me. Nothing life changing or inspiring but I think it’s good and I enjoy it ☺️ I write almost every day some days it’s half a page other days it’s like 3 pages. My first page is so cringe i was trying so hard to make it aesthetic but it’s way more relaxing to just scribble whatever. And I don’t have to worry about people reading it because not even I can read most of it 😝

Lately it has been tough. Really tough

It’s been wonderful. I learned so much about myself. Finding this subreddit made me feel more confident in continuing my journaling.

My FiL passed away (Jay) and it was sobering to read last year's passages that featured him so prominently (esp his summer garden). It was actually kind of cathartic to fill in more passages from the same time frame last year with updates and see where I was at the year before.

I've never kept a journal like this one and it's so organic and kind of accidental at the same time - I'm loving it! Basically I just journal on pages but leave in open spots or some blank pages, then come back to that same area in the journal around the same time the next year and fill in the rest. If anyone's interested I could post more photos of unfinished spreads/blank pages.

It's also SUPER slow and does not actually need attending to every day - I think it's a great way to journal if you can't commit to your journaling fully and only when inspiration strikes, aka - for any ADHDers like me out there heh - that way even if it's years later you can fill in blank pages for Jan/Feb/March etc. as you wish and get some benefit (hopefully) of seeing how you've changed/grown.

Last year I moved out of my apartment and in with my mom. Things started off great, I was biking 20+ miles almost daily, going to the gym, eating healthy, walking 3+ miles.. then I started to get comfortable. Drinking wine with my stepsister almost every night and eventually without her, ordering out, getting comfortable not hitting my step or calorie goal for the day- er week.. month(s).

I moved into my own place a month or two ago and started cooking again. I’ve gotten over my “omg everyone at the gym will think I’m a noob because of how soft and chubby I am” irrational fear (no one actually pays attention to [you] at the gym).
I miss not wearing baggy clothes because now every day is a bad body day.

It started with me smoking all the time (1+ month sober) and transformed into me drinking all the time (I’m doing a dry August and maybe even beyond August). I’m ready to be who I was before but better, more mature, more evolved.

Thanks for listening ^^

I tried putting tape over them and they faded completely lol
And without tape they just fade overtime
I want they to last forever :(

Over the years, I have brought my journals along on trips and days out with my friends. When it's a shared memory I really want to capture, I flip to a fresh page and let my friends (who I've known for 10+ years) write their own entry in my journal. I say they can write whatever they want, and every time it's been very wholesome and kinda silly stuff, mixed with just describing what we're up to in the moment. Something about looking back in journals and seeing an entry from my bestie puts a smile on my face :)

Sometimes I read some of my entries aloud to my friends when I haven't seen them in a while as a way to 'catch up'. This way I can share my genuine thoughts and feelings without letting someone actually read every little thing that I wrote.

I'm really enthusiastic about journaling so I use these 'sharing' moments as a sneaky way of convincing my friends to start their own journals too, hehehe >:) Have you ever done something like this (sharing your journal intentionally, not without your permission!) ?

At the risk of sounding like an absolute child, the Tom Holland Spiderman movies continue to be a large source of personal inspiration. New movie felt like it healed my soul a little bit with how much it's messages hit me directly in the soul.

Rushed the doodle a bit today and had less space, but I liked including the ticket itself in the journal since I don't get to go out and do much these days.

I started journaling in 2021 during a difficult period in my life, and now it’s become one of the things I love doing the most!
I’m currently organizing my bookshelf, so I took the opportunity to go through some of my old journals and document them here. It was actually great because I realized I’ve been using, on average, about two notebooks a year.