How to Keep a Journal in 2020 and Beyond

For those trying and failing to keep a journal from someone who tried and failed and figured a few things out

2019 was the first year I ever successfully kept a journal. It wasn’t a New Year’s resolution, and truthfully, it might not have stuck if it had of been. But April 20th I scribbled a quick entry in a little orange edged journal with a black cover and the rest has been history.

I’d like to tell you I had a plan from the start. I didn’t. That I anticipated the challenges and pitfalls along the way. I didn’t. That I went into it knowing I’d make it out the other end. I didn’t. That I was confident that it would stick. I wasn’t, but I was persistent and kept working at it, and that’s what I’m going to write about here.

But first, let’s take a quick look at that very first entry I jotted down in that journal:

Then from there my entry goes into a review of that first week, I was looking for some seasonal or quick work, and I described my options and the logic for the job I wound up going with at the time. It was a bad decision, but hindsight is 2020.

Which is kind of a perfect transition to the rest of this article, let’s dive in.

I began in the middle of my story. I didn’t try to capture all the things that happened before I decided to take up the act of journal writing, not in the very first entry. If there was something that needed acknowledging, it was acknowledged (my review of that first week for example).

In the past when I’ve tried keeping a journal, this always tripped me up. I felt like I needed to capture everything, and ultimately that felt overwhelming. When I sat down with that first journal in April, I decided to dive right in, to embrace the mess of it all, and to just write from that present moment to get started.

And that’s more or less what I did each day after.

I played around with recording goals, declaring different visions for my life, and how it all made me feel. I…

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