A New Year’s Guide to Journaling

To reflect, remember, and be creative. Easy ways to ease yourself in journaling in 2023.

‘Journaling’ can sound pretentious, exclusionary, and convoluted, so forgive me. It does, however, seem the fitting word to combine a daily-happenings-and-routine-diary, with rants, song lyrics, and missing chunks – and it’s becoming popular.

Sometimes, all it need be is a list of memorable bits from the week prior, functioning simply to separate moments from monotony in retrospect. Each year, however, a journal will accidentally become more developed and complex as we do more and desperately want to remember it all. Nonetheless, starting the snowball can seem like work.

These are easy ways to ease yourself into full-blown, obnoxiously religious journalling.

Start with a sentence a day

What happened today that separated it from any other day? What is a weird memory you’ll pick out in a year? Not ‘I ate breakfast’ or ‘I went to the gym’. ‘Called mum and spoke about a specific job interview’, ate a meal you don’t usually eat, and someone’s dog came to stay.

Furnish memories

I still so clearly remember an economics lesson that I wrote about because I retold a joke one of the boys made. By writing down that joke, I captured the whole lesson in my memory. You can do this with anything. Pick bits out of conversations, or mental images you’ll want to remember, which table you sat at in the pub, outfits you wore, specific games you played at pres; you’ll be surprised what your brain can remember when it is told to.

Soundtrack

An easy way to journal and capture moments in time is to leave notes to yourself on the music you’re liking at the moment. Just let yourself know, jot it in the margin, it’s an easy time capsule.

‘Things I’ve thought about recently’ and ‘stuff I liked’

…and you don’t have to elaborate. If you don’t want to sit and ‘ponder’, don’t. Podcast wisdom that you liked, a TikTok quote, a realisation you had about your hobbies, ‘I’ve got so much closer with x recently’, I’ve been really liking 70’s music, eating so many olives. You’ve journaled without the faff.

Photos without photos

Capture where you are writing from by drawing your view, or just describe the moment in detail. ‘I can still really taste the garlic from the bruschetta I made, I can hear a house alarm and my incense smells nice’.

Everything goes in

Quotes you like, write it down, receipts, tea-bag packets, notes people left you, fleeting tattoo ideas. Stick in writing you did on other pieces of paper when you had the chance like on the train, copy out stuff you wrote in your notes and when you wrote them.

Let other people do it for you

On holiday I often give my diary to my friends. They write about the day or just say hey, but they sign it and write that they are excited or drunk or tired and it captures a moment without having to recall it the next day.

You can miss days out and then do or don’t binge-write. Don’t be afraid to have chunks missing. Using a blank notebook rather than a diary makes this easier. Just don’t stop! Bullet point the missing chunk in moments you can remember, and carry-on writing.