January – March 2026 in Journaling

Each year I try to do a journaling-related post at the end (depending on what journaling for me looks like; I skipped 2023-2024) where I talk about my setup for the past year and what I’m planning on changing for the next year.

I wanted to try something a little different for 2026, where I talk about how my journaling is going for me and what I’ve changed since I wrote the yearly setup and journaling intentions each quarter (subject to change) as journaling is a process that constantly changes. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie, so I figured I could play with the formatting a little, take that idea on a little test run, and also yap about journaling instead of being a bad influence this time around.*

*Unfortunately, my friends are never exempt from my sparkly bad influence.

Habitica is gathering dust (again).

If you’ve followed me for a while and know anything about my feelings about Habitica, you know I have a very complicated relationship with Habitica since I made my account way back in 2016 (which feels so long ago! Can’t believe I graduated high school about a decade ago.).

These days I have less ready access to Habitica, so I feel it’s a natural progression that I moved off of it in recent years. My last job was a hybrid environment and I had my own work station, so all of my work-related tasks and reminders would be on Habitica and I’d have the tab opened and pinned separately.

The Journey app is also gathering dust.

Like Habitica, I have less ready access to Journey these days (I have the app on my phone for on the go journaling), which was what I used primarily for my journaling since I found the app back in 2018.

I made it a goal in 2026 to try and write in it once a month so I can at least continue using the app and not let my money go to waste. However, I do feel that while I paid for the plan annually when it started and then got the lifetime membership when they made it available a few years ago, I definitely made the most of my money’s worth if I end up not using it because my needs have changed. And more than likely, the app will still be there if and when my needs shift again.

I’ve been less active with my Commonplace Book.

My Commonplace Book was mostly collecting quotes I’ve come across; I started with an A5 journal from Notebook Therapy after digging it out from the depths of storage and then swapped to a B6 notebook since I wasn’t a fan of the A5 one. Occasionally I’ll gather quotes and put them in there, but lately I’ve been carrying other notebooks around with me so I’ve left it at home mostly and therefore mostly abandoned it.

I’ve kept a few quotes in my daily one, though, and I utilize the roll label I got from Thousand Skies to put the quotes on that I originally got to label and distinguish my stuff for moving since each roll comes with 100 labels. If I have 100 boxes to label from my bedroom, I think I need to do some serious decluttering.

The Five Year Diary was abandoned (a little), but I’m adjusting.

The Five Year Diary was going strong… at least until early January of this year and then I completely abandoned it for a few months. I had a routine of going in every week using my daily planner and picking 1-2 things to write in it for each day, though sometimes I’ll go in every few days. Recently, I picked it up again and added in some entries on some of the significant days for the past few months; the rest of the days I’ve kind of accepted that they’re going to be blank and I think I’m okay with it. It’s very weird, though, because I feel like I’m wasting paper not using them.

I did put my procrastinating and can’t adult today washi to use, though, along with the crabby one. I think for now I’ll keep leaving blanks since there’s a lot going on in my life, and I’ll just switch back to what I was doing when I started when the time is right to do so naturally rather than forcing it. Forcing it will just result in me completely abandoning it.

I’m not a fan of the chunk in the daily planner or Five Year Diary.

I knew when I got them that there would be some chunkiness involved as the year goes on, which I accepted (I’m a girl who enjoys using her stickers, after all, and I’ve been trying to do better at not collecting them). That being said, I’m still not a fan of it, and it’s possible that may be partially why I started abandoning the Five Year Diary; I actually thought of scrapping it completely and using the remaining pages as a way to test pens and markers on thin paper as needed, playing with a new layout, practicing my grip (and not using a death grip so much) when I get around to it, etc.

What the chunk currently looks like about 4.5 months into 2026:

But I don’t know. It doesn’t sit right with me to use the notebook as such when they’re expensive to get in the first place, even if I reframe it as “the money spent still teaches me about my preferences.” Part of my fear is if the Five Year Diary can even make it through all five years since there’s going to be a lot of flipping and spine bending since it’s a soft cover (though I did make sure to “break” it in before using it as one does with a new notebook). As for the daily, the fear is less so since I only flip a few times throughout the year and not nearly as much as a five year would be flipped, so I never had a thought of starting over. At the end of the year, it’s going to be stored away with the journal I used from July 2025 to the end of 2025, probably never to be seen again.

I’ve switched over to a pre-preprinted monthly schedule book rather than filling them in.

It turns out that having a monthly schedule book and filling it in three months ahead of time does not really get me to use it once I’m actually in a routine of sorts because somehow my brain just has a filing cabinet to remember those things, or I can find it elsewhere. I don’t use the pre-printed one too much either (it was on sale at Daiso since it was around February/March), so I may just scrap the whole thing completely next year.

I’m thinking it’s because calendars are easily accessible and oftentimes appointments are already emailed with reminders a day before or a week before. I already have a habit of keeping important emails and not deleting them right away when I get them. As for friends and book events, I rarely go to those or hang out (there’s a lot of extra work and mental gymnastics involved even if I’m told that I can hang out with friends or go to book events; it usually involves a fight, and I just don’t have the energy for that) but when it does happen, my friends and I usually text each other the day of or day before to make sure our plans haven’t changed and we also check in when we’re on the way and when we’ve arrived.

I started a gaming journal!

I’ve been thinking about doing a gaming journal for awhile, but I never actually started until late January this year. It’s inspired by my reading journal that I’m thinking of eventually starting once I get a bigger desk* (so I can store it in view), which is also inspired by my reading journal way back in elementary school where we listed the date, title, author and some thoughts about what we read.

*I have a standing desk currently since I have limited space in my current room, but it only fits my laptop, keyboard and mouse.

The gaming journal has the date and day of the week, name of the game played (if there’s multiple I do whichever took up the most of my gaming time), and some thoughts about the game/what I did. If there’s no gaming done that day, I just write “no games today” since I use my days of the week washi and don’t wish to waste that section on the tape.

It also lets me see if a Stalogy notebook might be something I’m interested in switching over to since I’m considering that for my daily next year rather than Sterling Ink, which I’ll go into further in the next section!

The extra pages in Sterling Ink (yearly, quarterly, monthly, notes) aren’t something I really need.

This could potentially change as the year continues, but I’ve not used the extra pages too much. When 2026 first started, I used the monthly to do a “washi tape of the day” as determined by RNG (I have all of my washi listed in a spreadsheet and use the numbers on the side), the yearly was used to mark which days were “no spend” days with my glitter highlighter, and the quarterly was used to mark how many pages I read each day. The extra pages at the end for notes and other miscellaneous things were intended to be used if I needed more than the full page and it would also be where I did an annual review of sorts at the end of the year.

The page before the month started would be a bit about what I hope to accomplish/do throughout the month and the pages at the end would be a quick overview of what happened throughout the month along with a “chapter” title that summarizes the entire month. I also included the number of stationery I used that month.

I kept up through January and February, but then in March and April it started feeling like too much to keep up with even if it was fun. I especially like my “washi tape of the day” on my monthly pages since some of my tapes would actually be used even if it doesn’t fit a particular theme, but it started feeling like a hassle to pull out my washi tapes each month. That being said, my current collection is in a container until I move and get a desk before I worry about getting storage for the washi that involves less digging and more visibility.

In February, I started to glue in my journaling cards at the beginning of the month so I could use some of them up (especially the duplicates). I used one of the pages at the end of the month to decorate with my flowery washi tape I got awhile ago (just so I can use it) and I glue in one of the sheets from my memo pads where I write out what stationery I used that month.

Since I don’t need the extra pages, I’m thinking of switching over to a Stalogy notebook for 2027. Stalogy has a 365 Days Notebook, which includes 368 pages, so it eliminates all of the extra pages Sterling Ink has and will probably be better suited for me. The one thing I don’t like about Stalogy notebooks is the extra information out the top left which I feel clashes with the rest of the notebook, but that’s being a notebook snob of sorts and enjoying putting stickers on them. Thankfully, I have a few stickers that take up that entire section or I can use a few smaller stickers that can cover the wording so it no longer bothers me.

I’ve picked up good old pen and paper long-form freewrite journaling again.

I mentioned it in my March wrap-up, but I’ve been getting an increase of headaches lately, so I started narrowing down what possibilities and changes in recent months since I’ve been getting an increase in them, and the only change is switching to pen and paper* where I memory keep vs. using the Journey app regularly to journal and vent. So I got a couple of spiral notebooks on sale**, and started using my days of the week washi tape and Tombows to write in the journal daily.

*The other reason is not drinking enough water, which I forget on a rare basis, so this is my friendly reminder to you to drink water and stay hydrated.
**I’m very wordy (see below), so it’s important to me not to use my expensive journals in this scenario since I also don’t keep many of them kicking around.

I try to write at least a page a day, but oftentimes this ends up being at least 3-6 pages and sometimes even 10+ pages depending on what’s going on in the day or if I have a lot on my mind, which doesn’t come as a surprise since my journal entries in Journey would often be 1k-3k words. On a particularly long venting session, I think I once went into 5k words, which unfortunately means I’ll go through notebooks quite quickly. I just finished one recently after a month and a half, and I’m making my way through the second one.

Since they’ll add up fairly quickly as well and take up space, I do plan on eventually scanning my entries in; I’m just not sure how I want to go about it or possibly even transcribing them into the Journey app. The latter would take up a huge chunk of my time even though I’m considered a fast typist, so it’ll be quite a project to undertake. Granted, there’s only 1 notebook currently, so it’s not too bad, but I’m currently in the process of moving; I’ll likely have 3 notebooks by the time I’m settled down into the new place.

(Of course, I also have the option of tossing them, but I do like having a piece of my personal history and honestly it gives me personal validation in the case I’m gaslighted. I’ve also thought about donating them to the American Diary Project eventually, but I’m not entirely comfortable with that currently, even if I have the option to not publish it until I’m long gone and haunting a bookshelf, definitely not worried about some rando judging my handwriting or thoughts. And also, in case I ever need to pull up a particular entry.)

I started using fountain pens recently!

Since I write so much more than I have in the past, using a ballpoint pen unfortunately gives me quite a bit of pain. I also have a death grip, though, so that’s not exactly helping any matters – usually I’ll experience pain after a page or two, and I have to take breaks periodically for the rest or deal with the chicken scratch that gets so much worse and unreadable as I write on.

Anyway, I started doing some research about that death grip, and I came across a suggestion to try fountain pens since the metal nib basically “forces” you to write lighter unless you want to tear up the paper. I also tried practicing in an old notebook that I use to test pen colors and scribble around in with a lighter grip, but that ended up resulting in drawing more than actually writing.

It’s certainly a rabbit hole to go down, but I hopped by a local stationery store one day (I talk about this a little in my March wrap-up, so apologies if you’re a regular reader of my online yapping and feel like I’m being repetitive) and got a Platinum Preppy to see if it’s something that helps me. I tried it out for about a week or two and made it through most of the cartridge that comes with the pen before I got a Prefounte and a TWSBI Swipe to rotate (also because the Swipe comes with a converter for when I want to switch to bottled ink since it’s more cost efficient). I also got a koi-themed Platinum Preppy that I seem to favor quite a bit because of the design.

(Apparently there was a Sakura-themed one a few years earlier, so I’m kind of disappointed I didn’t discover fountain pens until recently. And there was a cute purple cat one too that I missed out on. (ಥ﹏ಥ) But it’s okay, there will always be pretty fountain pen designs coming out, and I’d honestly be impressed if the koi one survives over 5 years of regular use. But then my Cinnamoroll pen has been kicking for a couple of years now and has taken a few falls despite being babied 90% of the time… so maybe it’ll last a good decade. I’m mostly just here to explore all that fountain pens offer, so I’m not rushing into anything.)

The Platinum one has more feedback and I think the ink is more “dry” so it worked really well with the cheaper notebooks I have, though I do have a habit of pressing down a little since I also like my ink colors to be more… vibrant and a little bold even if it’s just the usual trio (black, blue, red).

The TWSBI one I recently started using, and it’s less feedback, but the ink is more flowy so there’s some bleed-through when I press down too hard (at least on my current notebook, which has thinner, recycled paper compared to my last notebook which was slightly thicker). It’s not enough to bother me, though, since I can still read both sides of the page. There’s also some feathering since the paper isn’t fountain pen friendly, so my strokes seem broader. It kind of reminds me of some of my gel pens, while the Platinum one reminds me of my ballpoints, and this one also seems to keep up with me much better when I’m writing quickly because of that. I have to slow down intentionally with my Platinum one.

Let’s talk!

Do you use notebooks quickly? Favorite notebook you’ve gotten recently (or ever), or favorite pen(s)/ink(s) you like to use? For all my fellow journalers, what changes have you made so far this year to your setup?