Hey everyone! Today I’m going to be doing something a little different and talk about my journal collection. You may not know this about me, but I’m a bit of a stationery addict, particularly when it comes to journals and notebooks. Here’s a picture of most of the journals I own, just so you can get an idea of just how many there are (too many).
Obviously, I don’t have the time to talk about every one individually, but I thought it might be fun to show you some of my favorites and talk a little about what I use them for (or what I’m hoping to eventually use them for, if they’re blank). I’m excited about this post, so hopefully you find it interesting, too.
The first notebook I’m going to talk about is my most recent acquisition. As you may or may not know if you follow me on Twitter, I have started bullet journaling, and I bought this for that purpose. I know, technically you can use any journal as a bullet journal, and I have a ton of journals, so why did I buy this one?
Well, for one thing, because I love notebooks and I will use any excuse to buy a new one, but more importantly, this notebook is dotted, and it has thick pages. In the past, I have actively avoided blank or dotted notebooks, because for things like taking notes or just writing, I prefer lined paper because it keeps my sentences from slanting down the page. When I first heard of bullet journaling, I decided to try it in a lined notebook, since that’s usually what I prefer… and I hated it. I knew I couldn’t use a completely blank notebook because of the aforementioned slant issue, but I’d never used a dotted journal before. I wanted to make sure it would work for me before I went all in and bought a more expensive bullet journal like the ones people use on bullet journaling YouTube channels, so I got this dotted notebook from Walmart:
I started using this as my bullet journal in May, and while I really like bullet journaling, I quickly realized that I needed a better notebook. I still like this journal, and I use it for practice lettering and keeping various notes, especially ones about the internship I’m currently doing. The pages in it are just really thin, so no matter what pen or marker I use, it ghosts really bad. That bothers me, so I decided to get a better journal with thicker pages and bought the white one I showed you up there. I put the gold number stickers on myself because the plain white was a little boring to me, and I set up the journal, which hopefully will last me the rest of the year. (I was finally able to start using it for real on the 1st, and I’m obsessed with it.)
Those two are some of my current favorites, but another is this one:
It’s got gold-edged pages! This is one of the journals I took with me to France, and the one I used while I was over there to do more or less daily diary entries in French, chronicling my experiences and practicing my writing skills at the same time.
I was only using about one page per entry, though, and sometimes not even that. And, of course, I missed some days because of travel or forgetfulness, so when I got home, the majority of the pages were still blank. Instead of keeping them empty and wasting all that paper, I decided to just continue using it as a diary now that I’m home. I need the French practice even more now than I did when I was actually in France, anyway, since I don’t have to speak the language all the time anymore. I’m hoping that this daily writing practice, along with some other daily habits, will help me hold onto some of the French skills I learned while I was abroad—but you’re not here to hear about my language learning activities, you’re here to read about my journal collection.
This is another of the most important journals to me currently. You may be wondering why a plain black spiral notebook is important in any way. Well, as some of you might now, I’m currently participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, and this journal is where I’m keeping things like my outline, character profiles, important locations, etc., for my current work in progress. I’m not much of an outliner, so there’s not much in this thing right now, but I imagine that will change after I finish this draft and start preparing for revisions.
I had to rip out some old pages to prep it for this new role, and the only annoying thing about it is that it’s wide-ruled instead of college-ruled, but I would feel really bad about throwing away a perfectly good, mostly empty notebook just because of that, so I figured I might as well put it to use.
Those are all of the notebooks I have specific uses for, but I couldn’t do a post on my journal collection without talking about all of my tiny notebooks. Now that I have a bullet journal, which is kind of meant to be a catch-all place for your plans, thoughts, ideas, and whatever else, I don’t know how useful these will be, but back before I had one, I would have one of these things with me everywhere I went. I used them to write down to-do lists, shopping lists, random ideas I had—pretty much everything. Needless to say, I went through these things pretty fast.
I’m sure I’ll figure out some way I can use these things now. If you have any ideas, let me know down in the comments.
Those are all of my favorite journals based on function, but now I want to show you some of the ones I love based on aesthetic. I don’t have an explanation for these, so here’s a gallery of 5 or 6 of my faves.
Okay! That’s a general overview of my journal collection and some of my favorite ones in it! Do any of you also collect journals? What do you use them for? Which ones are your favorites? Let’s talk about it down in the comments!
Thanks for reading, everyone! I’ll see you soon!
-Ariel