One Line Journal

Korrin B.

January 23, 2011 - 7:00 PM

I have always been a fan of journaling. Sometime during my sophomore year, I became obsessed with journals, in fact. I had about ten different kinds, each a different theme. I had a haiku journal, a dream journal, a travel journal, a regular journal, a quotes journal, a strong women journal, a gratitude journal, and the list goes on. I often found journals at stores that I just thought were beautiful and would buy them but never get around to starting them. I had grand ideas, and still do, but alas, they now just sit on my shelf awaiting my next bout of creativity.

Anyway, the point of this is that it can be difficult to keep up with journaling, yet it is such a neat thing to do. My friend recently found the perfect journal for me and I have been enjoying doing it so much. I actually encourage everyone to keep a journal like this. It is called a One Line a Day journal. It is set up so that each page has the date at the top and then has five very small sections underneath it that say "20__." So, you fill in the year and then write a one to two sentence description of your day or its overarching theme or something significant from the day. The next day, you move on to the next page and fill in the year and write something. The next day, you turn the page and repeat. When you have written something for each day, you move on to the second section on the page, fill in the new year, and describe your day. The journal has enough spaces to cover five years of short descriptions of your days and the way that it is set up allows you to be able to read what happened on a particular day over the course of five years. For example, you would be able to read what happened on January 23 for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 all on one page upon the journal's completion.

There are three reasons why I love this journal. The first is that it is so easy to keep up with. It doesn't take much time at all to write one to two lines to capture your day. The second reason why I love it is that I love being able to come up with creative, poetic ways to describe my days. I love to think of what the theme of the day was or some sort of riff that made it particularly memorable. The final reason I love it is because it is an amazing study of a life. I'm looking forward to being able to remember little moments and feelings throughout my life and be able to see if different days have similar feelings each year. I want to look for patterns and learn about myself through its five-year journey.

I encourage everyone to journal and for those who have a tough time keeping up with it, I particularly recommend this type of journal.