I’ve kept a journal for most of my life. I started in school notebooks, with greyish rough paper, using my pencils and my school fountain pen. I’ve had all sorts of journals since, mostly on paper, but also digitally.

I have a couple of different journals on the go now, a journal (in a traveller’s notebook) where I just write what comes to mind, a poetry journal, a doodle journal and several artjournals.

My planner is a journal too, a bullet journal. I will write more on that one in a post after this month, because bullet journaling is an essential tool for joy 🙂

I don’t store my “dear diary” type journals . They are mostly to free up my mind for my creativity. I do keep all my doodles, half-baked poems etc from those journals. I paste those in a notebook.

The reason that I destroy them and not save them like many others is that, for me, dear diary type journaling is cathartic, just emptying out my brain and not really thinking about what I write.

Getting rid of those journals feels like a transition. I still remember the last shredding party I had, and it was wonderful 🙂

And these days I also LOVE to write guided journals. I’ve written two up until now, 30 days of Joy and Spring to Joy, which is a freebie for signing up for my mailing list (the signup form is at the bottom of this page!)

I am working on the third, and have ideas for at least five more!