Vent: the "one notebook per year" thing doesn't work for everyone

I was at a journaling meetup in Portland last month and this person told me I was "doing it wrong" because I start a fresh notebook every 3 or 4 months instead of running one cover to cover for the whole year. She had this whole system where she numbers pages 1 through 365 in January and refuses to skip a single day, and she showed me her 2024 book with all these half empty weekly spreads that she clearly just pushed through out of habit. I told her my life doesn't fit neatly into 12 months and her face kind of dropped. When I move to a new place or a work project wraps up, I want to close that book and start clean. It helps me leave stuff behind. She kept saying consistency was the whole point of bullet journaling, but honestly I think that's just one way to do it. Has anyone else felt weird pressure to stretch a notebook way past its usefulness? I'd rather waste 20 blank pages than keep dragging around a book that makes me feel stuck.

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marybutler1d ago

Stretch a notebook way past its usefulness" is exactly it. My friend Dana had a similar thing happen at a writers group in Seattle, some guy told her she was wasting paper because she bailed on a journal after six weeks. She'd started it right when her dad got sick and every page was just dread, so she tossed it in a drawer and bought a two dollar one from the grocery store instead. Best thing she ever did, she said, because the new book had zero history in it. Her rule now is if a notebook starts feeling like a chore, it's done. Twenty blank pages cost you maybe a buck fifty.

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