A stack of $1 notebooks to process my thoughts

Do you still write consistently in your journal?

For me, I think I developed this habit around 2019 or 2020. So for about 6 years now, I’ve been trying to put my thoughts into notebooks. I called it a “dairy” when I was a kid, but now people seem to know it more as a journal. Journaling, the kind of habit that people recommend again and again to help one’s personal development journey. I'm not an exception.

Because my hands move slower than my mind, putting my thoughts into words is a great exercise to clear my cluttered mind. Sometimes things are too complicated when we just keep them in our heads. So, I find that writing them down is really helpful to processing whatever issues we’ve been facing in life. And because it’s so personal, we don’t have to worry about others reading it. We don’t need to write a grandiose reflections or such, but rather, we just need to try making sense of life by slowly pouring out sentence after sentence.

I used the hardcover notebook in the middle for 4 years, it literally contained my thoughts and feelings from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2023. It's costs more than $1, more expensive than the others. But the cover is worn out, so it looks very ugly now. That's also part of my consideration for getting a notebook with rings for my next journal, because when notebooks like the middle one wear out, sometimes the papers are almost detached from the stitching or glue of the notebook itself.

So, for the next 2 years after that (2024 and 2025). As far as I can remember, I bought those thinner notebooks with rings for less than $1 each. Both are great because they can be flipped easily (how do I even explain this part lol, you get what I mean if you have a notebook with rings, right?). But because they’re thin, I find them a bit inconvenient to keep "everything" in one place. You know, sometimes I also like to jot down ideas in my notebook, brainstorm some pros and cons about other things as well, not just for journaling.

I’ve seen some youtubers using notebooks from Paper Republic, for example. If you know, that one with the leather cover almost like a ”jacket", and you can add more small notebooks for various purposes each. Something like this one below. I think it looks really pretty and neat, huh?

[image found from pinterest, of course]

I haven't checked the price, but I guess it costs pretty expensive considering the quality. It just makes me curious if people compile everything they want to write in one notebook or use different notebooks for different purposes? Please share something like “your journaling system” or anything like that hehe :)