letting go of perfect pages: reclaiming the joy of junk journaling

For the longest time, I thought that journaling had to look a certain way. Neat handwriting, carefully planned layouts, colour co-ordinated spreads - the kind you see all over social media. I loved looking at them, but then everytime I opened my own journal, it made me feel stuck. Afraid that the page wouldn't be good enough.

And so, for a while, my journals became more about performance rather than purpose.

I've kept journals in some form for the last 10 years. After every trip I take, I make a little book filled with tickets, receipts, photos and scribbled thoughts - something tangible to remember the trip by. Those journals were never perfect, they are in fact very messy, overflowing and chaotic but they are the ones that I love most and always flip back through.

Somewhere along the way I think I have forgotten that journaling is meant to be for me.

When I discovered junk journaling last year it truly felt like coming home. At it's core, junk journaling isn't about creating something pretty for an audience - it's about documenting life as it happens. Collecting scrap and memories and preserving them between the pages of a notebook. It's about taking a snapshot of a moment in your life, not curating content.

But I think, online, junk journaling has started to lose some of that meaning - and you are welcome to disagree with me on this point.

So much of what we see now are perfectly styled pages that feel almost too polished to touch. And while those spreads are beautiful, they quietly reinforce the pressure that I have been trying to escape, that your journal has to look a certain way to be valid.

So I have been trying to use junk journaling as a way to unlearn perfectionism. I've stopped planning pages in advance. I've stopped worrying about colour palettes and ruining spreads. Instead I have been asking myself simple questions when approaching a blank page:

• what do I want to remember from today?
• what do I want to keep?
  

A receipt from a meal. A business card from a cute shop. A coaster from a pub. The list of things I take for my journal could go on forever. These pages that I create aren't always pretty but they are filled with memories.

Letting go of perfectionism in my journal has gently started to spill into other parts of my life too. It has reminded me that creativity doesn't need to be productive, aesthetic or shared to be meaningful - it is still valid. It can be messy and unfinished.

So if you're scrolling through junk journaling videos and feeling like you're doing it wrong, this is your reminder: messy journaling is still journaling.

Your journal doesn't owe anyone beauty, it only needs to hold your memories.

And honestly? Those are the pages that you are going to treasure the most.