Everything Journals

When I was in high school, my best friend at the time introduced me to journaling. Obviously, I knew about it, but her artistic spreads inspired me to start. As I began, I struggled with perfectionism, and that kept me from enjoying the process and maintaining consistency. I couldn’t allow myself to relax and experiment. 

Thumbnails for a "Paint & Fellowship" I did at my church

If you know anything about my relationship with art (besides the obvious obsession with retro aesthetics), you’d know that the excitement of experimentation is my creative fuel. I knew there had to be an answer to my perfectionism problem, and I craved a place to capture the essence of each season in my life. 

Over the course of my college years, I developed a system that works perfectly for me. I encourage you to consider some of these ways I’ve learned to ward off perfectionism and enhance productivity and creativity. Maybe this won’t work the same for you, but why not try to develop your own method?

Gwena’s Everything Journal

Mapping out our home when we moved to MN last year

• Use it for Everything

  
  

  • Besides having a place to sketch out thumbnails and write about my day, it’s a place to throw anything and everything. I have ADHD, so I either forget about or am overwhelmed by keeping track of multiple notebooks and journals. But now, need a grocery list or a calendar? Slap it in there. Notes for church or a prayer journal? You already know. 

    
    

  • I LOVE looking back at old memories, and this is one of my favorite ways to do it. No paper for game night? No problem. Now I’ll remember how much fun we had!

Trying something I don’t normally do and it’s not very pretty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• Keep it Small

  
  

  • Blank page paralysis is a real thing, but keeping the pages small alleviates a lot of that pressure.

    
    

  • Oh no, I hate it! I guess I ruined an area smaller than my hand. Much easier to move on and fight perfectionism.

• Don’t be Afraid of “Ugly”

  
  

  • The goal is to make something, not something perfect. If I had waited to make something until I was sure I could do it precisely as I imagined, I would not have anything to show for it. Consider your everything journal your “ugly phase catcher.” Maybe those words or thumbnails come out how you hoped they would, or maybe you have to completely reinvent your vision. That’s what this step is all about: getting ideas from your head to the page. Sometimes, it’s not pretty, but at least it’s there.

Paint/ink spills that inspire me to make aliens and space ships

• Be Extra Messy

  • After making peace with the ugly phase, keep going. Try something new, let it get weathered. Don’t panic when coffee spills, don’t fight bleeding ink or shaky lines. Let go of some of that control and see what happens.

As I said, I know this won’t be perfect for everyone since I designed it to work best for me, but I hope you take some of my notes to heart, stop procrastinating, and make something a little ugly!