It's okay to lower the bar

I had a journal entry in my Hobonichi Techo Cousin for every day this year until July, where I have a string of blank pages.

I was doing so well, and I was really in to the swing of journaling every day… until I wasn’t.

The cause? Doing a little too well at journaling, actually. I got inspired by the fancy spreads of other Hobonichi enthusiasts on Instagram, and started making my own pretty layouts. My pages were looking beautiful until things got busy and my mental health/energy took a dive.

I’d raised the bar for my daily entries, and didn’t have the energy to meet it. But instead of just lowering the bar and going back to boring/ugly entries, perfectionist thinking kicked in. If I couldn’t make it good, why do it at all?

So I missed a couple of days, at which point the all-or-nothing thinking started up. I’ve broken my journaling streak, why even continue? I’ve basically ruined my Hobonichi now, for the rest of 2024!

Thankfully, I was eventually able to shake myself out of those thoughts and come back to just getting something, anything on the page at the end of the day. But there was a while there were I really thought I may as well put the journal in the bin.

I had to remind myself that it’s okay to lower the bar. That an average version of something is better than a perfect version of nothing. All I can do is have a go.