SCS💐🤍

  Journaling✨

Past blogs you may have noticed that I journal. Well in almost every WIML and Self Care Sunday. Today I'll go more in depth of what materials I used, how to structure your journals, and what benefits it has to you. This isn't something that you should be forced to do. Use journaling as your safe space to vent, give gratitude, or write whatever thoughts you have wandering. There is no right or wrong on how to journal. What I have on this blog are ideas based on how I journal.

  Materials

Honestly, any sort of writing material works when journaling. You can use any journal or notebook that you have lying around in your room. Personally for me, I like to have a journal with a minimal or modern design to remind me to write my thoughts. Most of the journals that I own, I have bought them at Marshalls. You can honestly find pretty covers with minimal or modern designs for pretty cheap. I recommend to start with a small journal to get you adjusted to a new routine.

When it comes to highlighters, pens, or pencils, it does not matter. If you are new to journaling, lets keep it simple to the supplies you have at home. The writing supplies that I use are gel pens (color and black), regular ballpoint pens, and highlighters. It is very rare when I do use pencils to write. I do make mistakes and use white out. Sometimes I just cross out the words I misspell or don't want to use instead of using white out. There are no specific brands to what I used, it is mostly the stuff that I have lying around or impulsive bought items. 

  Types of Journaling

There are many different types of journaling. I'll be breaking the ones that I know.

Junk Journaling: This can be a way to scrapbook with items that you collect along your day. For example you can have a page set for a restaurant that you tried. On the page you can add in the receipt, pictures of the food that you had, a piece of the napkin that you took (believe me, I have seen people do this for this type of journaling), and pictures of the place you went at.

Self Care Journaling: You personalize this journal to your liking. This can be where you have self care prompts that you want to respond to and better understand yourself. You can add your self care goals that you set out for yourself and how to improve on becoming a better version of yourself. 

Morning/Night Journal: I have seen people and this journal myself. It is called "The Five Minute Journal" and it will already have the prompts for you. Every page is dedicated to the day (the start of your day) and night (to rewind and prepare for the following day).

Reading Journal: This is perfect for all the readers. This journal can be bought or made on your own. After finishing a book, you have a page dedicated for each book you read and fill out the information such as name of the book, author, genre, pages, start/end date, format, etc. These are perfect to write what you like about the book you read and your favorite quotes.

Journal a Day: One journal that I started to work on during my last semester of college was a small reflection entry daily. This was tied in with a poetry book that I have. The 3 questions that I would add is "what line stood out to me?", "why?", and "how to incorporate the line to my lifestyle?"

Benefits

There are a lot of different benefits to journaling. One of the main reasons that I like to journal is for improvement on mental health and reduce stress. Writing down my thoughts or answering prompts have helped me from stressful moments. There is something about writing that makes me feel better after a tiring day.