A Year in Journaling

Here's what I learned journaling daily in 2025

One thing about me: if I commit to a habit, it becomes a mission. This is not to brag, because it can actually be a bit annoying for others, and I’m learning that it’s likely a symptom of my neurodivergence. I often lose sight of other, more important things in the process of my singular focus.

For example, my reading streak on a particular e-reader was in the four digits of days, until I realized that I was only supporting a platform I didn’t align with fully, and decided to try to support more indie and local bookshops and do some analog reading as well.

My Duolingo streak was another one with a count in the thousands, until I realized I was in an abusive relationship with that little owl and ended it. Not only would I become obsessed, but I’d feel genuinely guilty and beat myself up mentally if I broke the streak. It didn’t help when there was a widget with a cute cartoon character of my favorite animal disappointed in me when I “failed.” Triggering, to say the least.

However, if there’s one of my hyper-fixations I would advocate for, something that’s actually served me well and helped my mental health, it’s journaling.

I journaled every day in 2025, and I’ve continued that “streak” into the new year. As a writer, not only does it help me “warm up” before continuing on my manuscript— almost like stretching before a workout—but it also serves to clear my mind in a meditative way.

As an early riser, I typically journal in the mornings, recounting the previous day’s events as I sip my coffee before the rest of the house is awake. This practice has led to catching some really special moments, such as an intense winter oil-painted sunrise through the icy trees over the Piscataqua River at our primary home, or watching the soft, pastel watercolor sunrise over the misty lake from the porch at Camp on a cool morning late last summer as a mother loon taught her chick to hunt.

It’s also helped me work through a tumultuous year for our family. My father-in-law passed away late last year, and he was someone who we all—unfortunately—had multi-faceted, challenging relationships with. His final year was especially wrought and filled with emotional upheaval. Our family learned that grief isn’t just reserved for those we have positive relationships with. You also have to grieve what never existed at all, and the end of hope and possibilities—for apologies, change, and closure.

Although my imagination prefers to tie stories up neatly with a bow, in real life, not every story has a happy ending. Journaling has been a method to process and accept that. And ultimately, try to figure out what moving forward in a healthy way looks like.

I also noticed an improvement in my journaling, which was interesting, because chronicling your innermost thoughts would be a seemingly immeasurable practice. However, at the beginning of last year I tended to repeat topics, almost as if I didn’t realize that’s what I focused on in every single entry. I treated these repetitive thoughts like they were first-time observations. By the end of the year, I was moving forward instead, hitting new and different ideas and having true breakthrough moments.

I also noticed that it helped to improve my writing in general. I went from simply chronicling my day and working through emotions, to playing with setting description and sensory details. Especially those summer mornings at the lake, and when we visited Costa Rica. Revisiting those vacation entries brings me back to the peaceful moments of feeling the ocean spray on my face, the clean-earth smell of tropical flowers in the cloud forest, the sweet taste of fresh fruit, and the intense warmth of being directly under the sun near the equator on the spring equinox.

So with all this progress, what’s next? I plan to keep going.

While I’ve never found myself at a loss for what to write about, I’m curious to explore prompts in this new year (and I’m happy to share the ones I’ve come up with, please let me know in the comments if that’s something you’d enjoy!). Though I haven’t found myself spiraling back to previously over-squeezed topics, I think the key to keeping things fresh is to experiment.

I likely will keep my daily format of neatly writing on lines the same (I guess I’m a vanilla diarist), but I would be open to visual journaling or bullet journaling occasionally in addition to my regular practice.

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One interesting practice I’ve added this year is a beautiful five-year journal from Rifle Paper Co. It forces me to sum up my day into a sentence or two—something that I’ll want to revisit when I look back on that day. It’s a really unique format and I think it will be a memento that I always treasure.

Over the next five years, my oldest will graduate high school and college, my middle will graduate high school and is planning to go to college, and my youngest will go from being a tween to a driving teenager. It’s such a pivotal season in our lives, and in some ways, the closing chapter of my kids’ childhood… That was a difficult sentence to write.

Overall, no matter the format, I know I will be glad as our family shifts and spreads its wings and eventually grows and changes that I captured these seemingly inconsequential days. Because they are not truly inconsequential at all. In any season, a life is a beautiful, complicated, funny, and interesting story worth telling.

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