little notebook
I recently treated myself to a cheap no-name hardcover ring notebook to draw and write and use my washi tape in. It was already a little damaged and seemed to be from old stock - the calendar inside has options for 2020 - 2022. It’s just for fun, something very easy to be crafty and creative in without a huge project or pressure.
I used to have something very similar on my tablet via GoodNotes 5, and the possibilities are endless with that, of course; but I just missed the actual tactile experience, the cutting and taping and roughness pf paper, the page flipping and the design restraints. It’s too easy to search for optimal fonts, aesthetic images, sticker packs digitally.. ugh! And being able to erase and undo it all enables the inner perfectionist.
I also used to maintain a scrapbook - sooo full it’s barely shut! I still have it. I tended to it for almost a decade. I couldn’t and didn’t go out much as a kid, so everything was a special occasion to me. The receipts of all kinds of things, the wrist bands of events, letters and postcards by people, museum tickets and more. There’s also one page in it where I collected the whiskers my dog shed over the years.
This new one is not for a productive reason and it’s no fancy paper. I’m not following some hyped up system, I’m not doing this to be on my phone less - after all, I’m a phone girl in all the right ways. It’s what I reliably have on me at all times and works well to remind me and keep everything up to date, as opposed to a paper planner I would forget all the time and can only hold so much info :(
I wanted to get back into some of the (mainly gratitude) journaling I used to do on my tablet. I also miss drawing on paper.
I like to include things like:
- highlight of the day
- gratitude
- wishes
- epiphanies
- things i did for myself / selfcare stuff
- ideas
- song of the day
- goals
- mood
but not in a fixed template. When there’s nothing to write about in each of these that’s okay and there’s space for so much more, too.
I also don’t care much about aesthetic. Not that it’s ugly - my washi tape collection is cute, I have stickers, my handwriting isn’t bad and I can bang out a nice doodle. But making these aesthetic BuJo extremely full study spreads is not my job and I’m not a Hobonichi influencer, so I don’t see the point in wasting time designing the perfect pages and writing extra slow and careful in tiny font, rewriting the same notes 3 times and print out some images. I don’t even have a printer.
Here are some pages in it so far.
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Published 03 Feb, 2025