A Tragic Story of Not Journaling - And What I'm Going to do About It

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Imagine: You just woke up. It's early. You’re tired. You didn’t sleep much last night. Your first instinct is to go back to sleep, but if you do that, you won’t have time for part of your new morning routine, so you make yourself get up, groggily make some coffee, pick up your notebook and pen, and then…nothing. Your mind is still waking up, and you cannot think of a single word to put down on your paper, but you have to write SOMETHING, so you proceed to write “I don’t know what to write.” For three pages. Because that’s the rule of the journaling - you’re trying.

This type of journaling is one that I tried a few years ago called “Morning Pages” and it’s actually from a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Basically, every morning after you wake up, you write down anything and everything that comes into your head until you have filled three pages in a notebook. Even if you can’t think of anything to write, you write anyway, and you don’t stop writing until those three pages are filled.

It’s apparently a very beneficial form of journaling and is really effective if you want to clear your head or jumpstart your creativity, and I’ve heard stories from people who start morning pages and struggle with it at first, but then after a while, they start to see the benefits of doing it. There is no doubt in my mind that morning pages has a lot of advantages to offer…that is, if you stick to it long enough for it to show its benefits.

Alas, that last part is where my trip with “Morning Pages” took a U-turn. Now, don’t get me wrong – I am in no way trying to say that “Morning Pages” does not work or that you shouldn’t try it, but see, I have this terrible habit of not getting into habits. I’ll start something, and then if I struggle with it for too long, or I get busy with other things, or just get tired, I stop doing it.

What were my struggles with morning pages? Well, there were a few. First of all, I am not a morning person. My brain takes a little bit to get out of its state of grogginess when I wake up, so when I tried to write that early in the morning, right after waking up, I couldn’t really think of that much to write about, so I would just end up writing, “I don’t know what to write,” or any random words just to fill the blank lines. Yeah, starting my day off with a pen and notebook and writing down my thoughts sounded great and all, but I would find myself looking at my paper later in the day and wondering why I was even trying it because I usually wasn’t really writing anything useful or meaningful, and I felt like I was just wasting paper. So, after a while, I got tired of it and stopped doing it.

Why am I telling you about my tragic past with journaling, you ask? Well, I recently found myself looking for new hobby, and asked myself, “What do I like?” and given my obsession with pretty pens and pencils and notebooks and fancy handwriting, I thought, why not try out journaling again? This time, though, I’m going to research different types of journaling, spend a week trying them out, and document my findings here. Will it be worth it? We’ll see! If you’re looking for a new hobby and are considering journaling, but aren’t quite sure about it yet, I hope you’ll join me in my journey to journaling (or not) and can use this to help determine what you might or might not be interested in. Do you have any experiences with journaling or anything you'd like to see in The Pondering Pen? I'd love to hear about them!