2025, October - Paper Journaling

The blog is basically a form of journaling already, although it's a very heavily regimented form of it, with well-defined goals and stringent deadlines. I've heard that journaling can be relaxing and help with writing in general, so I think I should explore it. Maybe it'll double as a base for something I would like to do in the future as well.

Wanting to explore paper journaling will double as a way to fill up all those empty notebooks that I have lying around my place. What I would like journaling to do for me in the long run, is make sure I note down ideas in a more structured way. I don't have any ideas I would want to follow up on daily, but having a structured way to note them down and reference them back would be nice, and help clean up the clutter in what's supposed to be a workspace. I've thought about a way to do this.

There's these colored paper tabs that I've seen people use to study. I'm not particularly good at studying, so I've never had enough structure to justify their use, but now I can color-code ideas. I would like color-code for topic, and differentiate the type of reference by their position. I'm imagining that I'll hold the notebook book by the bottom end, so I can't very well have the tabs sticking out the bottom, but the top, and the side is fair game. If I were to decide that tabs sticking out the side were for ideas that need following up on to solve something I'm currently working on, and those sticking out the top for ones that I'd like to do eventually, and if I removed tabs that were addressed, ideally I'd end up with a notebook that only has tabs sticking out the top. Those look at least normal.

If I can keep some modicum of self-control, I can leave some margins for later as well. I don't think there's a practical reason for it, but especially for ideas or things that the journaling session has left unresolved, it might be kinda nice to write the results into the margins, if I ever want to leaf through an old journal.

Given I have a pretty concrete idea of what a journal of mine should look like now, I should think of what kinds of notes I should color-code for. In the set of coloured tabs I got were yellow, orange, blue, green, red, pink, violet and neon pink ones. I have a number of different kinds of projects running around, but I'm thinking that I'm not going to flesh out the ideas in the journal itself. On each tab I'll try to scribble a very brief description of what it's there for.

Yellow tabs are going to be for research holes. I'm expecting most of them to be in the realm of the sciences or politics. I'm guessing that a fair bit of them will just be a note of a book I need to check out regarding some topic, and what's supposed to be in there.

Orange will be for performing arts that I'm embroiled in. Music pieces I need to check out, and also maybe events I would like to visit, in case any such thing should catch my eye in the future.

Blue will be for writing projects primarily. This will comprise story ideas, revision notes, and the like. Because drawing as a hobby has a similar vibe for me, I'll include it here as well.

Green will be for practical objects. I'm counting stuff like writing code, and even changes to the website into this - and when I'll inevitably change my markdown software again.

Purple is going to be a development tab. It's for projects or habits that are giving me diminishing returns, and need rethinking. The idea is to set up a method that won't take much longer than the ones that are in place, but help me along the process better.

Pink tabs I'll use for checking out references. Those can be books, shows, games, websites or YouTube channels. Stuff that's for passive consumption. I'll think of this as a preliminary stage for moving the stuff into a new drawer, which might well be another tab.

Red tabs I'm assuming will be my least favorite ones, because they'll be for sorting life stuff. Not necessarily bills I need to pay or the like, but rather systems on how to improve those. Ideally I won't have to use those much.

Pink tabs are for new stuff. Stuff I want to try, but haven't gotten around to yet. That can be as simple as trying some new piece of equipment that needs to be integrated into my desk somewhere to function in any decent capacity, to learning something that's a little different from the stuff I'm used to doing.

As a person that writes a bunch of words in a day anyway, this doesn't proof too difficult a habit to establish. I don't exactly mind writing physically. I've actually done it for many years primarily, even for the very verbose fiction writing I was already doing in those days. However, the challenge here is that I don't have a pen that I like carrying around with me everywhere at the moment, and the habit of packing yet another object doesn't make my scatterbrained pre-department routine any less frantic. I used to carry around fineliners, until they all gave up on me at once somehow, and now I'm down to ball-point pens, most of which are too nice to carry around in my trouser pocket with coins and keys.

At the same time, I found myself rapidly forgetting what tab was meant for what. In my case, that was quickly solved by a quick little scribble in the flap of the notebook, but it makes me think I perhaps should have started with three or four tab colours, and add the other ones as time goes on.

As I begin checking off tabs, I'm noticing how bad I am at keeping margins, when they're not printed in. I just feel like the lines are too short, and then each entry becomes much too long. Instead, I've taken to only writing tabs in the odd pages, and adding notes and annotations on the even pages. It probably means that there will be a lot of empty space in the notebook when I'm done with it, but at least I don't have to scribble in between my own lines.

Over time, it's becoming apparent that I use the journal sporadically. My memory is better than expected, in that all the stuff that's meant to go in there will go in there eventually. However, since I don't feel up to interrupting whatever I'm doing to jot down an idea, the dates don't really make sense in as granular a way I'm using them at the moment. I can probably get a similarly accurate timeline if I just separate the entries by month.