My life is as boring as it gets being a full time WFH employee. I'm practically a hermit with no life because damn, this is the 10th 9 to 12 hour shift in a row and I worked on a PTO day like an idiot.

I still sit and write about my daily life. What the heck do I even have to write about if I'm a "hermit"? My day.

I wrote over a page and half about helping my brother return his Amazon package and going to UPS. Wrote another page about the bakery. Just finished a page of ranting about my job. I'm about to write about tonight's tacos.

I somehow managed to stretch 2 stops on my errands run, into over 2 pages. If you want to write, I promise you, there's a story everywhere you look. You just have to "stop and smell the flowers". I'll be honest, journaling has made me aware of the tiny things in life often ignored in our rush to and from places.

Describe your day, the smells of the bakery, the things you accidently overhear in line, debating between 2 pieces or 1 piece of bread, the menu board, the coffee you chose, what did it taste like, first snow, chatting with strangers. Describe the barrage of random thoughts you were zoning off about in line or why you're even in the UPS store.

Don't feel pressured like "my journal is so boring". Nobody is looking (unless you want to, tots up to you). Your journal is your pal, probably the ONLY one who is GLAD to hear the most mundane day of your life.

When you're 90, you'll be able to almost visualize that random Friday the 20th odd December, 2024 from the details.

No pressure. No "how do I do this?". No "Am I journaling wrong?" Remember to have fun, enjoy the act of journaling, and have a champ of a day my friends. Go get that coffee and tell your journal how awesome or awful it was 😉

In the two months I stayed in my other journal, I wrote very little because I hated the feeling of the cover. I got a new one that has an almost fabric like cover and I’m a lot happier in this. And it’s fountain pen friendly!

While journaling, I remembered a passage from a book I read a long time ago that was relevant to what I was journaling about. So I went and found the passage and decided to copy it down 😅. I even cut out some parts and still ended up with 2.5 pages. Not to mention the page of writing before the passage and the page of writing I did after.

I'm glad I did it though! But my hand hurts.

The book is Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng for those curious.

"Anger is fear's bodyguard." I probably could have summed the whole thing up with that one line but oh well.

Pen: Pilot Kakuno <M> Ink: Pilot Black cartridge

This lighting would have been perfect for a sheening ink:<

Ignore my stupid lil moon idk why I drew it so wonky, and the cussing at the end 😉 this is my dream journal & first dot grid. I'm loving how it's looking & am stoked for the rest of it!!

I hope you enjoy this! I used flash because that shows how the pink looks most accurately. I saw they have a pack of these pens on Amazon but it came with some other inferior pinks I wasn’t fond of lmfao. I’ve tried soooo many other pink inks but G2 still has the best one.

What’s your favourite pink ink?

Trying to reflect my thoughts more with my first language. It's also oddly satisfying to just write a bunch of words.

This writing so far is my made-up language. I don't know what to do on the next page, but my cursive lowercase letters need work. I wish I had a locked dotted paper, but this can be fine until I can afford another journal. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Hi friends. 👋🏼 This is my A5 aquamarine Leuchtturm1917 classic hardcover I've been using as my midlife journal. It took me a while to realize that I was summarizing my week instead of being more introspective, so hopefully now that I've addressed that, I'll be motivated to press on. Sometimes a gentle reminder in the form of future uses and how you want to look back on your life (and journals) is all it takes. I wish I had a life phase set of journals like this for every decade, but alas, here I am. 😑

I sit down every Sunday and do this single spread entry using two or three keywords as prompts (brown ink). I think from here on out I'll use the same color teal ink (it's my favorite). The other slides are showing the difference in wear on the page edges between used and unused pages. I have washi tape marking each quarter year, so yes, this notebook will take me into the end of 2025.✌🏼

Also just want to mention to all the ladies out there that midlife/menopause will throw you. 😵‍💫 Find your closest GenXer and make friends. Having friends in other generations is so helpful and can be so life affirming, and we have so much hope for those coming up after us - at least that is how my Xer tribe feels!!! I had no one to tell me what to expect at midlife, and medical science is so far behind on women's issues even being discussed or properly diagnosed. I hope that is not the case in future! 🧘🏻🙏🏼

today i wrote about yesterday, when my father and grandma said upsetting things to me, because i was looking to complain. i didn’t think i would still be emotional about it. but after writing this entry in the early afternoon, the subject was the only thing i could think about all day … :-(

i cried while writing this and it’s rare that i cry when i write even about the most upsetting things but sometimes i’m just reminded of it as i sit there and write. has this happened to anyone else?:-( or maybe i am just 16 and will of course be too emotional. i love writing in my diary but sometimes i feel like it makes me more upset.

I've been using this 5 year Leuchtturm diary since April 2022 and it is holding up amazingly well.

(Also Hi everyone! I'm new on this subreddit but have been keeping diaries since 2010.)

Struggles with gender and homelessness... the system is messed up. It seems though that writing sideways, and in English, helps a lot! :D CW: use of strong language, homelessness talk, mention of surgeries