Ana’s post about re-devoting herself to journaling made me want to take a look at my practice this year. This year I have been using three primary journals:
- For my daily planner, I use the Effin’ Birds planner. This is my third year using it and it just meets all my needs really well.
- For my journaling, I am using a Notebook Therapy bullet journal. I started my second volume this year (the previous volume covered the previous 2 years)
- New this year, I started trying to track my craft projects in the 2026 My Year in Yarn notebook.
I’m going to skip my report on the Effin’ Birds planner because I love it, and I mostly use it to track work tasks and appointments. And frankly, that’s even more boring to you than it is to me!
So let’s jump into my Notebook Therapy bullet journal. I find my journaling ebbs and flows quite a bit depending on the month. I’m not a daily writer – in fact I’m lucky if I reach half a dozen entries per month. I do WANT to write more, but when it gets to individual days I often find there’s not as much to say as I want. I track what books I’m reading on Storygraph and my knitting projects in the knitting planner. Sometimes there’s a quote or something I want to remember and I’m trying to be better about including it, but really I’m not that good. I really have been making an effort to find more stickers and ephemera to add in there when I do write, and that has been creating far more interesting pages to look back on. But overall, I’d like to do more.
As for my 2026 Year in Yarn, I think this has quite possibly been the most successful of my new habits. I really am taking the time in the monthly spreads to track what I want to work on, what I accomplish, and with the habit trackers some other items too (like how many days I lift weights and exercise). I do add some stickers and “flair” to my pages, but I also use them. I use the project logs the way I wanted to, which is the real intent of keeping this journal: to take notes on my projects that I can refer back to again and again (what yarns, what needle sizes, how I modified the pattern, etc.) Also, though I haven’t shown you here I am tracking what materials I am buying and using in the bag (like a purchase log) which also helps me try to spend and use what I have more mindfully.
So overall, I’d say I’m not doing too badly, but there’s always room for improvement. How are your notebooks treating you this year?