Yesterday I bought another journal. I know. I have seventeen already – I counted them this morning.
Actually sat down and counted them in a fit of embarrassed introspection while trying to find somewhere to hide the new one.
Seventeen leather-bound, fabric-covered, beautiful nothingness journals. The newest one is marbled with swirls of white and grey, golden glittery lines running through it like capillaries, with pages edged in emerald green.
“For your thoughts,” the guy helping me pick out journals said jovially as he wrapped it, clearly under the delusion that I have thoughts worth bottling up like that. I smiled and swiped my card without admitting that this would most likely become another victim of my inability to properly use a beautiful journal. Because the real losers here aren’t the eight quid journals from Paperchase I’ve successfully filled.
No, they’re the ones that gather dust on my shelves until they’re old and warpy – the keepers of all my could-have-beens. I like to call it my Journal Graveyard. It’s the bottom drawer of my bedside table where unused and adorably stale journals go to die.
Don’t get me wrong, I write. All the time! Lists on post-its that eventually end up plastered across the walls of my flat like modern art.Shopping lists on random bits of paper that I lose within minutes.
Sleepless text conversations with myself at 2 AM that I save in the Notes app on my phone. Hell, I probably could fill this marble and gold treasure with my midnight ramblings…but that’s just it. This journal isn’t meant for that kind of thing.
It’s not fair to the journal. Those wee entries about not wanting to get out of bed and watching Netflix aren’t made for thick, creamy journal pages and fancily adorned covers. They belong scrawled across Post-it notes and phone screens and dog-eared notebooks that I bought for a pound each from WH Smith.
I’ve loved journals ever since my mum bought me my first one at age nine. It was covered in mauve fabric with a tiny golden lock and key that didn’t actually lock. “For your secrets,” she had murmured conspiratorially.
I felt important just carrying that journal around with me. Important enough to have secrets that needed jotting down and hiding from my family. It took me ages to work up the courage to write in it, but when I did…I wrote MY NAME in giant letters across the first page.
Actually using it terrified me. What if I couldn’t think of anything important enough to waste those perfect pages on? What if I wrote something embarrassing and someone found it?
Ever since then, I have always been too scared to properly use a nice journal. It’s been twenty-something years and my journal-buying habits have hardly improved since I was that nine-year-old girl. Last night my housemate Ellie caught me trying to smuggle my newest addiction into the house in a Tesco bag.
“Oh god, not another one? !” She scoffed. She wasn’t even trying to hide her disappointment, her eyebrows raised so high they got lost in her fringe.
“This one’s different,” I grumbled in return, which is what I say every time. Except it’s true. I don’t buy two identical journals.
No, that marble and gold beauty is nothing alike that hot pink sparkly one, and that one is nothing like the tiny purple moleskine I also own. See?! They’re nothing alike I swear!
! “Look, Katie,” Ellie began, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned against my bedroom door. “You know you can actually write in these things, right?
Like that’s their fucking purpose. That’s what they’re literal”
“I know,” I bit back quicker and more defensively than I intended. “But I’m saving them.”
“For what?” Ellie asked patiently.
“You know full well you’ll never use them if you keep hoarding.”
“For better thoughts.” It was out before I could censor it. “When I have better thoughts to write down, I’ll use them.”
“Better thoughts,” she repeated slowly. “And when do you think you’ll have better thoughts?
When are you going to be good enough to write in your swanky journals?”
Good enough. That’s the key isn’t it? When will my thoughts be good enough to contain within those precious covers?
When will my handwriting be good enough? When will my ideas be interesting enough? When will I be…enough?
I recognise how ridiculous that sounds. It’s just a flipping journal. Journals aren’t sacred, they’re readily available containers for your brain ramblings.
Anyone can buy one for two quid from WH Smith. And yet…
Ever since I got into beautifully bound journals I’ve always felt like my thoughts deserved better than to be slopped onto some shitty notebook. Like the words I want to write are too fleeting and rubbish to be trapped inside something that gorgeous.
Beautiful journals should be graced with beautiful thoughts and prose. As soon as I scrawl my chicken scratch across those clean pages, they’ll never be beautiful again. Unless the chicken scratch is beautiful.
But my chicken scratch is appalling. “I feel like my thoughts aren’t good enough to write in my nice journals,” I told my therapist one session about a month ago. I braced myself for her to laugh.
She didn’t. Instead she nodded solemnly. “Oh, lots of people say that.
Beautiful things often get put off for best or saved for a special occasion that’ll never come.”
She went on to explain that we often trick ourselves into thinking we need to be “good enough” before we allow ourselves to do fun things, buy nice things, or in my case, use a nice journal. Then she asked if there were other aspects of my life I tried to hold off on enjoying until I was good enough. I changed the subject.
Obviously. This isn’t the first time someone has pointed out this weird journal paralysis I have. My best friend Sophie bought me a journal last year with “Write Badly In Me” embossed on the front cover in sparkly gold letters.
When I opened it, I laughed so hard she worried she’d offended me. Then we both cried because she really did understand the problem. “No pressure,” she said when she handed it to me.
“It basically comes with permission to write crap in it.”
Written bad in it I have yet to, sadly. Despite having someone gift me a journal with instructions on how to break my silly rule I haven’t made a jot of progress. Apparently, telling me it’s okay to write badly in my ‘nice’ journals is not enough encouragement to silence the little voice telling me my journals need to be better than me.
I did some googling to make sure I wasn’t the only person hoarding journals with every intention of filling them up. Turns out I’m far from alone. There’s whole Reddit threads dedicated to feeling guilty about buying journals you never write in.
I found Instagram accounts devoted to taking pictures of their collections of unused notebooks. Apparently there’s even a Japanese word for buying books and not reading them: tsundoku. Gods knows if there’s a Japanese word for my habit, but there should be.
Something poetic. Hmm. Blank-page paralysis?
Stationery Dysfunction? I tried training myself to like cheaper notebooks. Bought about five Claire’s sketchbooks and tried to force myself to practice my handwriting until it was good enough to use a ‘nice’ one.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. I’ve got fast, messy handwriting. That’s just how I roll.
I can force myself to write neatly, sure, but I’ll never change my natural handwriting. Might as well just accept that and buy journals that suit my chicken scratch. I tried buying journals for different purposes.
A journal for when I travel, a journal for my dreams, a journal dedicated to creative writing. Nope. Just extended the paralytic fear across multiple journals rather than giving me permission to use one.
Last summer I took one of my nicer journals on holiday to Greece. I threw caution to the wind and brought the faux leather Dreams journal with faux croc-embossed detailing that I bought from Paperchase before my trip. “You’ll have better thoughts now you’re on holiday,” I promised myself as I stuffed it in my suitcase next to my sunscreen and Road Dirty DVDs.
I wrote maybe five entries in Greece that whole holiday, but I didn’t write in my good journal. The sun didn’t make my thoughts magical enough. Taking my journal on the balcony of my hotel room one night and watching the Mediterranean didn’t inspire me enough.
So instead of ruining my perfectly good journal with my thoughts about Greek salad I typed them into the Notes app on my iPhone. When I returned from holiday that beautiful journal went back on my shelf looking exactly as I left it. For.
Best. My Nan, who survived through rationing in World War Two would shake her head at me if she still lived. “There’s no need to keep that stuff for best love,” she’d say whenever I was particularly wasteful with something inheritably reusable.
“Use your good china. Wear your good clothes. Best is for now, darling.”
Best is for now.
If only I could bring myself to agree with those words when it came to my journals. Thing is, I fucking love writing. Like actually sitting down and putting pen to paper, filling up whole notebooks with words love.
I love how slow and thoughtful it makes you become. How when you physically write something down, you’re more likely to remember it. Studies have shown that writing by hand increases memory retention and even helps with forming creative ideas.
The act of writing helps us process emotions and articulating your thoughts with pen and paper can help you achieve clarity. I know all this, and I still don’t journal. Because what if I don’t have anything important enough to write down?
What if I fill up an entire journal with rants about how stressed I am at work and scheduled reminders to feed the cat? Because my life isn’t interesting enough? And of course, the big one.
What if I mess up? Journal pages are too pretty to be ruined by my lead(y) pencil. Also fear of commitment.
Once you make that first mark your beautiful journal is gone. It becomes a journal with words in it, not the possibility of words. You dirty it.
Instead I buy those stupid £2 decomposition notebooks that are giving journals a bad name. They’re entirely generic, never promising pretty paper or fun textures. They accept any kind of handwriting and gladly take bullet points, scribbles, and margins filled with crossing outs.
My filled journals are barely less tragic than the empty ones. I can’t seem to stop buying them, honestly. Every time I see a cute notebook in a shop I want it.
Part of me thinks I should just stop shopping atPaperchase tbh. When I was little I used to buy toys then leave them in their packaging because I wasn’t quite ready to play with them. My mum called me a sad loner who spoke to inanimate objects.
She’d probably say the same about my journals. I’ve always loved the potential of a new notebook. Flipping through to the first blank page and picturing just how great you’ll fill it up.
Journals are the closest thing to a blank canvas I’ll ever own and goddamn it if I don’t judge myself harshly for not painting more bloody pictures. I showed Ellie my Greece journal the other week, silently mouthing apologies for letting it go to waste. “You should just write something in it,” she said when she saw my wistful expression hovering over the unblemished pages.
“Like the first entry has to be a masterpiece or something.”
“Easy for you to say,” I snapped at her. Ellie keeps a jar on her bedside table where she drops notelets of things she’s grateful for every night. Over the years she’s filled up literal jars with tiny scraps of paper.
She actually writes in her journals. “How hard can it be?” She scoffed when I groaned. “You pick your favourite one, open it to the first page and…” She waved her hands in the write motion.
“WRITE SOMETHING.”
Gods, did I want to believe her. Part of me knew Ellie was right – if I could just push through that first entry I’d be free to write in as many journals as I liked. But what if I wrote that first line and hated it?
What if I decided my handwriting looked stupid that day and ripped the page out? I sat there paralysed with fear for ten minutes before snatching my journal away and placing it carefully back on the shelf. Deep down I think I’m afraid of ruining the journal by filling it up.
What if every entry was as boring as I imagine they are in my head? What if I hated journaling once I started? Or worse – what if jotting down every funny thought or delicious meal doesn’t actually make my life more beautiful?
What if those pretty pages don’t make my shitty thoughts any prettier? Maybe my problem isn’t that I hate filling journals. Maybe I’m just afraid of what I’ll find when there are no more pretty notebooks to hide my thoughts behind.
Maybe I buy these journals as a reminder that someday I’ll be good enough to fill them up. That someday I’ll be the girl who writes lovely letters in her free time, or runs marathons, or knows what she wants to do with her life. Maybe the journals aren’t what I fear will never be full enough, but instead a symbol of what I have to become to feel worthy of them.
Journal fillers, if you will. Or maybe I buy them because they’re pretty and make me happy, unused. Maybe they’re decorative, stagnant skeletons of notebooks that I like to admire every now and again.
Accidental artwork with potential, if you will. Either way, I pulled my new green and gold journal from it’s hiding spot this morning and sat it on my desk. Next to my laptop.
I opened it to the first blank page and placed my favourite pen next to it. It’s sat there since noon, taunting me with its sparkle as I type this on a draft document instead of jotting down my thoughts like a normal person. Maybe tomorrow I’ll start journaling.
Maybe I’ll force myself to write the first dumb thing that comes to mind so I can shatter this weird block I’ve put myself under. Write about the weather. About how hard Steve from next door laughs when he watches rugby.
About how my stomach feels like it’s going to explode if I eat one more damn waffle.
Or maybe it’ll sit in my drawer with all it’s prettier brothers and sisters. Another triumph of awful human emotion over common sense and pretty notebooks.
Or maybe. Just maybe I’ll open that journal up and start writing this nonsense down, continuing the ridiculous irony that is my and-my-empty-journals’ existence. But probably not.
It has gold flecks.
0 Comments