🦋 💜 🌿 Hi! How is your week going?
Life in my corner is certainly interesting as I approach a huge change in my future.
Not only is the weather getting more chilly and rainy in my corner of the world, making the approach of winter more real,
But with the approach of December also comes the approach of a huge life change: a December baby.
As I have been super busy trying to finish all my work and prepare for the little one that is coming over the past 7 months, boy, are there a lot of feelings.
Taking care of my mental health has never been more important.
Creativity and writing are huge resources for me to stay sane, grounded and clear on where I need to put my focus at any given time.
So that brings me to what I want to talk about today:
my journey going from one notebook to many.
As a writer, I started young. I originally began with a single journal in middle school–and I wasn’t that great at keeping it.
When I was a teen, I was more interested in updating my blog (and my friends) through online publishing than filling a notebook with private thoughts,
so I had the same journal for almost ten years. That’s how long it took to fill it, one tiny update at a time (mostly about boys).
But after college, I read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
which encouraged me to write daily first thing in the morning regardless of if I really had anything to say or not–
thus, I began to truly keep a regular journal and develop a more consistent and prolific writing habit.
There’s something about me where I can’t necessarily remember what I felt the day before,
so my journals became a powerful resource for me to actually craft a life responsive to my feelings and needs.
I was better able to gain clarity on what I wanted and pursue things enjoyable to me, including following my dreams to start my own business in my twenties.
It was an indispensable resource so I dragged that notebook with me everywhere.
Over the years, I developed a shelf of filled-up such notebooks…
But even though they were all useful in the moment, I began to realize that something was still being lost in the shuffle long term–
I’d pick up an older notebook from a few years before and find ideas that still resonated, and gave me tingles,
but I couldn’t help but think, “Why did I never do anything with this idea?”
Considering this scenario happened over and over again, a burn grew in me to find a solution so ideas like these didn’t fall in the cracks.
Good news: I eventually figured out what to do!
I was able to create a system for myself where fewer of these ideas fell into the cracks, and more of them were developed into articles, business products, life changes and more.
I did this by transferring a lot of these thoughts to a digital organization system.
(I hope to talk a little more about how I’m doing that one day soon, but for now let me stick to the paper journals!)
The thing is:
For the longest time, I thought that having more than one physical notebook at a time would just add to my confusion and disorganization.
Surely, more notebooks = more cracks for my ideas to fall into and be forgotten…
But because I eventually learned to create a digital system that organized my ideas overall,
encompassing ideas from all my paper notebooks,
I could trust myself again, and gained a new freedom to explore.
That’s how I started keeping different notebooks for specific purposes!
Now I don’t have to worry anymore that things will fall into the cracks (because I have a digital system to serve as an umbrella for everything), and
I can dive into specific notebooks to drill down and focus on certain goals that are important to me without fear or overwhelm that I’m setting myself up for failure down the road.
I’m finding this balance really useful and I wanted to share what’s working for me right now.
Come take a peak and I’ll show you my whole paper system.
These notebooks keeps me sane, grounded, and even add a touch of whimsy, inspiration and magic to my life!
Hope my video gives you some ideas as well to make progress on your own goals.
Wishing you much creative and productive joy in your writing, work and life 💜
