It’ll come as no surprise to discover I’ve had a love of journalling for my whole life.

From the newsy childhood letters exchanged with my best friend, through my drama-soaked teenage diaries to the current almost-daily handwritten download of my brain. Writing has always been the way I balance my emotions in my life and discover what I’m actually thinking. It’s the best way I know to process the vast amount of things that happen in everyday life. The good, bad, big and small.

Plus it’s the best excuse for new notebooks ever!

Sabotage!

Recently, with some big things going on in my life, I’ve inexplicably found myself sabotaging my practice. I’m choosing to go to bed too late or I’m too tired. Maybe I come home later than planned from social things with friends and family. Just so that I can just fall into bed without writing. Or I have mountains of admin that needs doing instead. Of course, some of it does. But I really don’t think re-filing my student loan application circa 2003 is urgent, at this point in time.

I’ve managed to just about keep up with my bullet journal. This is because if I don’t put things in lists then generally they don’t happen. But I’ve entirely stopped writing in the second of my five-year diaries. The first ran between my 25th and 30th birthdays, the second has languished untouched since April.

Frustratingly, this appears to be a habit of mine during stressful times. The periods of great sadness in my life are marked by conspicuous swathes of blank pages in all three of my daily diaries. I have a five-year one-liner and a gratitude journal. Then there’s the main notebook where I can write a few lines or twenty pages, depending on my mood.

After midnight scribbles

Last night, I was late to bed. When I eventually slipped between the sheets it was after midnight. Still, I couldn’t settle to sleep. So I put my light back on, and I pulled out my big journal, and I wrote.

And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. There were tears. I snorted with laughter at times. At others, I had to stop to say wow out loud! Because my brain on paper is an awesome thing.

I am tired today because I didn’t get enough sleep. Usually when my alarm goes off my mood isn’t great. If nosedives as I emerge from slumber. Because I’m tired, achy and already late. But today my mood was stable and positive!

So I’m setting a reminder using If This Then That, and a Whatsapp group with two friends. Technology is massively helpful! I plan to start going to bed an hour earlier than I usually do, to give myself time for this practice daily.

As with any kind of creative practice, the magic is in doing it regularly and showing up even when I don’t fancy it. So I’ll see how I get on, but I hope I’ll see positive improvements fairly quickly!