Journaling for no reason is a good idea
I’ve kept a journal since around 2001. They started as plain metal ring spiral bound notebooks that I filled with poems and sketches. One guy who saw them once remarked after seeing one of their contents, “this dude’s crazy”.
At first the purpose was to write poetry that I could eventually turn into song lyrics. Soon after I realized a couple of things; first, that writing poems is not the best way to kindle inspiration for songs. Having a love for the aesthetic and functionality of your notebook will positively impact the quality of ideas you write down and make you want to use it. It was at that point I discovered Moleskine pocket notebooks and used them religiously from 2004 until 2013.
Let’s not forget the pens
A notebook is just blank pages without a tool to mark it up. From a young age I cherished my pens because they were my original tool for making art. Whether it was writing or drawing I used a pen for it all. It was important that my pen felt comfortable and felt as though it was mine. I didn’t want to use just any pen, it had to write smoothly and the ink had to dry in a real nice, pretty way on the page.
Losing steam
For the past year I’d been losing steam when it came to journaling. I started to experiment with multiple types of notebooks at once. That was a mistake because it muddies the waters and dilutes your ideas between different notebooks. I find it to be important that a notebook have a specific purpose. My main notebook has always been a place for my private thoughts, doodles, artistic sketches, plans for ideas to be fleshed out later, and more. As I started separating out these topics into different notebooks I find myself paralyzed and unable to reach for any specific notebook because I’m unsure which notebook I should put a certain thought in. That’s a problem.
Another issue is that sometimes you just don’t get along with a certain notebook format. I once loved spiral bound notebooks because that’s all I knew. Then composition notebooks felt more refined. Moleskines then felt perfect because of their portability and their vibe. When I started using fountain pens I switched to Midori Travelers Notebooks. Then the fragmentation happened. I was using Field Notes at work, Midori MD for certain projects, Hobonichi Techo for other projects, larger format non-pocket sized Travelers notebooks for commonplace books, and now I have a small library of half written in notebooks.
What is to be done
I think the most important thing to do when things don’t feel right is to listen to your gut and make a change.
Clearly what I’m doing isn’t working. As much as I love my current Travelers notebook setup it isn’t bringing me joy and it doesn’t cause me to want to write in it as much anymore. My thoughts are being scattered. The solution is to browse a selection of other notebooks and pick one that will meet my needs and use that. Begin collecting all the disparate thoughts I was scattering in different notebooks and put them into one.
It’s okay not to finish a notebook. I may simply put the current unfinished notebook in my bookshelf with my other notebooks that I have saved since 2008 (there was an accident that caused me to lose my pre-2008 notebooks), pick up this new notebook, and use it exclusively.
I will no longer split my thoughts between notebooks unless there is a very clear purpose for a separate notebook.
Exceptions to the rule
My rule is to use one and only one notebook for all my journaling whether that takes the form of writing, drawing, list making, or whatever. There are some easy exceptions to make.
When I write an album I want my work to be bound in one place. Not mixed in with my daily thoughts. A thought or idea may begin in my main notebook but it will migrate to a purpose made project notebook. So things like a lyric book which also includes notes on what chords and other music related info is needed to put a song together I almost always use a Field Notes notebook for because they are small and don’t have a ton of pages. A whole album’s worth of lyrics and music can fit in a Field Notes notebook. I often do the same thing for engineering/production notes on an album. So I’ll have one Field Notes for the lyrics and music and another for notes on tracking, plugin settings, microphone positioning on each song, etc. That makes sense in its own notebook.
If I’m working on a series of drawings for a project then that’ll be its own notebook. Often I’ll just have a dedicated notebook only for drawing where I do more serious art, not just the doodles you can find in my main notebook.
That would be 3 notebooks, maybe 4 at most. One main, maybe two for documenting the music creation process, and one for serious drawing (not doodles).
Conclusion
If you find yourself not journaling as often but want to then it might just be time to refresh your tools. Pare down the amount of notebooks you’re juggling and focus only on what you can keep in your mind at any given time.
You should also keep in mind that you don’t have to keep a journal habit. It’s for fun. It’s something you should want to do. If you let it lapse for a few days or even a month at a time like I do and often have, that’s fine. In fact, there are times when I’ve journaled every day for weeks and then long stretches where I just write something once a month. I once tried morning pages and I can tell you from experience that they’re overrated and don’t do what they claim. That’s something I’ll talk more about another time.
In short, just write when you like. Don’t worry about keeping a schedule. Keep things simple and listen to your gut.
