7 Things to Do With an Old Blank Journal

Calling all bookish folks who have stashed their finest notebooks in a cabinet never to access them. Your old blank journal isn’t too nice to use. So let’s talk about what you can do with it.

Now, before you come for me, please know that I’m not above stashing notebooks. I do have a whole cabinet of them. But it’s not because I don’t intend to use them. It’s because I simply haven’t gotten to them yet.

You know how it is. If you’re slightly bookish or writery, you’re going to get a ton of notebooks as gifts. And I’m not complaining. But I’d say that the first six or so months after Christmas, I have a surplus.

Then they dwindle, and by November I’m left wondering if I’ll ever have a blank notebook again.

Thank goodness Christmas comes every year!

Anyway, I know that it can feel like there’s a lot of pressure when it comes to starting a notebook. In fact, I’m willing to bet that you’ve started some notebooks, gotten a couple of pages in, and then never picked up that notebook again.

It happens to us all, and it tends to make us gun shy. Er, notebook shy.

Let me explain.

Why Do We All Have an Old Blank Journal?

Notebooks are great. You need them. Except when it’s time to throw out all your old notebooks.

But sometimes, you start a nice notebook, and then you don’t finish it. Then you have some really intense notebook guilt. You feel like a bad person for not letting this notebook achieve its full potential.

So when you get another really nice notebook as a gift, you let it sit there until it becomes the old blank journal you never touched. And then the guilt compounds because you feel bad about not letting this notebook live its true purpose.

And with that much guilt, it can be hard to start a new journal. So you leave that old blank journal in the cabinet just collecting dust and stacking newer old blank journals on top until you have so many that you feel you can’t ever use them.

That’s crap.

Let’s talk about your next steps so you can finally fill those pages.