About Journaling

- March 30, 2021

Still one of my favorite spreads!

I always loved notebooks, stickers and washi tape and had fun buying them, but I hardly used or filled them. So March 7th, 2016 marks a special day for me: I came upon the word "hobonichi" thanks to Kaila from rainbowholic. Seeing her cute, artistic and positive way of cherishing memories really echoed within me. I still know that I grabbed the first notebook of my shelf and started "hobonichi-ing"! Because at that time (and many month later! X'D) I didn't know that the word "hobonichi" wasn't the word for "cute, artistic journaling", but for a company, which produces popular notebooks and wonderful, fitting covers!: Homepage

My very first entry!

I simply wanted to fill some pages.

That was my desire up till today. I want to fill the pages of the notebooks with wonderful snippets of my life which I would forget otherwise! I wrote a diary as a kid, but... I hardly had the time to do so when I began working part-time at the age of 14 besides my studies. So I didn't want to have a "written" diary, but one with little comics, stickers, washi tape and more!

Because of my terrible time-restraint and my unwillingness to unpack all my stickers, washi tapes and more at the end of every day, I define the layout of multiple months and sometimes a whole notebook in one go and ahead of time. This way, I can fully concentrate, go with the flow and enjoy the process of designing something I will use later. This way, I don't have this fun, but time-consuming "act" every day, but I can concentrate on preserving my cherished memories!

The habit of journaling

My current, "real" hobonichi. I LOVE the cover!

It started as a fun idea I wanted to try out: Can I fill this page? And the next? And... maybe this one, too? After doing multiple entries in my journal, I realised how much it relaxed me. How fun it was. How I started to concentrate on the positive and tiniest things which made me happy in the course of the day. I loved to flipp back and reread my entries. And I loved to flipp forth to see what wonderful, decorated pages were calmly waiting to be filled with great memories! It made me smile and go along with the flow.

And then I filled one notebook. And another one. And yet another one. I stopped couting how many of my old notebooks I already filled, but here is my collection till now:

All my journals up till now on one glance!

These books are part of me. They accompanied me on my travel to Japan 2016 or Venice in 2019 and collected wonderful, amazing memories! They also accompanied me on my Staatsexamen (state examination), helped me overcome great losses within my family, learn more about myself and see how much I've grown. Times weren't just all fun and games, but I pushed through them. Journaling helped me to accomplish this.

And it's such an amazing feeling when you meet other journalists and you inspire each other! You can clearly see that my journaling style changed a lot after I met Bitsubachi:

It changed from this...

... to this!

To the Future!

So all in all I picked up a hobby on a whim which still sparks so much joy! I hope I can meet even more incredible people in the future thanks to journaling, because I don't plan to stop anytime soon. <3

At the moment I use the "real" hobonichis, but beforehand I used normal notebooks which I bought from all around the world or got as a present!

One of the most current spreads! :) Stickers made by love_is_soup (Patreon)

Are you journaling and what style do you like? Did it become a habit? I'd love to meet lots and lots of journalists and share this beautiful hobby! :D

If you are searching for inspiration, I can tell you mine: