3 Things That Journaling Taught Me

I have been journaling consistently for the last two years. By "consistently," I mean at least three days a week. When you consistently carry out an activity, you eventually start noticing new things about it, and you learn from it. So in this post, I thought I's share with you three things that I learned from spending hours letting my creativity loose in my journals.

Before I get into it, I want to say something like a disclaimer. You might read the three points and feel like you are reading about something you already know. And you will be right! However, often times, there is a significant different between knowing some universal truths and actually experiencing them! That's what I will be talking about here. Let's go!

1. Life is in the Details

Have you ever seen those anime videos where random daily activities like picking vegetables from the garden, chopping onions, and writing in your notebook look so aesthetic and pleasing and simple peaceful?

(If you haven't, check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eLT66SbA04)

Anime is famous for romanticizing the sensory experiences of daily life, and I am a fan of that! And to my surprise, I was able to do something like this too through journaling.

Journaling daily, I started paying more attention to the various things my eyes see, my ears hear, and my hands touch. The sound of scissors cutting paper, the smell of glue, the bulkiness of my filled-in journals, the rustle of my paintbrush bristles--all these are things I had seen and heard before without registering. These details are small and nearly not as evocative as some more engaging ones. But these details literally make life up. We would be lost without these tiny rhythms--they help us hold on. They don't have to make sense, they just have to be there. And that, I think, is wonderful!

2. You Will Ruin Things

I have sooo may spreads that I don't like because they didn't turn out how I wanted them to. I tried to fix them but I couldn't. You can't. There are a lot of things in life that you simply cannot change or rectify and fixating on these does not help. Ultimately you have to let go. But letting go does not mean pretending like that you did not make a mistake or forcing yourself to not feel bad about it. I post my unsatisfactory spreads on my journaling page too as a way of owning whatever I ruined. You just have to accept that yeah shit happened, can't change it, and then move on to whatever you were planning to do next.

Even carefully engineered robots that have only ONE job to do will ruin that job at some point. It's just how things are, so it only makes sense to accept it--it's the only logical next step!

3. Trust The Process

When I journal, I don't know what I am doing half the time. I just go with, "oh this looks nice here, and that I will put on top..." and so on. The beginning absolutely does not makes sense most times, I just go with the flow. That for me is difficult in general because I am someone who absolutely always has to know the next step. But journaling like that made me realize the importance of trusting the process in many aspects of life. For example, even with my shop, I have simply started it, am going through the motions and that's it. I don't know how successful it will be but I have started and am following through.

That's all I wanted to talk about today. I don't have a purpose of teaching anyone anything, I simply wanted to share my experience. You may have learned different things from the way you journal or engage in any other creative activity. If any of this resonated with you, I would love to know in the comments!