2025 | Where We’re At With Journaling

I went into 2025 with all these intentions with my digital journaling and then life happened, and things went a little south. Not to get too deep into it, we were hit with bad news after bad news surrounding my family. Things were a bit down for me and still kind of is, but I’m in therapy regularly and have a great support system. Quick summary, my dad has been battling Type 2 Diabetes for over a decade and he was recently added to the transplant list for a new kidney. Over the past few years, there have been quite a few scares, but he’s doing as well as he can. On top of that that, earlier in the Spring, my older brother was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better know as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. At this time, there’s no cure for ALS. As a family, we’re navigating this one day at a time and being the best support system we can for my brother. Safe to say, family matters has become the forefront.

It’s definitely been a fine line trying to balance family and personal life matters, but it’s really been a one day at a time situation.

Do I still keep a digital journal?

In the last quarter of the year, I switched over to physical for my reading journal. So yeah, I’m going into physical journaling territory with a mix of Notion trackers. And since I have incorporated this at the end of quarter three, I’m ready for 2026 and it should all be an easy transition.

How about a physical journal?

Since I’ve been moving away from bookstagram, I’m diving back into the blog. And I wanted to be more intentional, so I bought Leuchtturm1917 journal for all my blog ideas/planning. I’ve been having the best time setting this up and working some creative fun into it.

I wanted a smaller one for quick thoughts and brain dumps, and stays in my bag. Barnes & Noble had some for $7, so I have a Fabriano mini. Anything from my day, things I need to remember, everything goes in there. Then when I’m at my desk, I can transfer whatever to my calendar and Notion (more on this later).

You mentioned Notion earlier, tell us more!

Notion has been an ongoing project over the past few years and I’d say this year was finally THE one, where I established exactly what I wanted. I keep my book and reading catalog in Notion, and it’s my most updated one. There’s still some work that needs to be done because I’m also adding my physical catalog in there as while, safe to say that it’s a huge database of books!

I did start a life planner in there and I haven’t decided if I’m going to stick with it for 2026. I don’t need so many planners, so I’m trying to figure out what’s most efficient for me.

For all my reading tracker notion needs, I use Bibliophile Notion Template by Francesca Graziella. And the life planner notion is 2025 Dream Life Planner by Slow Cozy Kelly. Both have in-depth video tutorials that have been extremely helpful. My reading tracker Notion will definitely be a staple in the next year and I’ll be using a couple of elements from the Dream Life Planner!

And that’s where 2025 went with journaling! I’m hoping to deep dive into each journal, so keep a lookout for those!

What’s in your journaling eco-system?

This post contains affiliate links to different retailers, items purchased through links on will provide a small commission, which is all used towards feeding my love for books and journaling.

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