into the journal: imogen oakes
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This feature series examines how and why people journal, because no two practices are identical. Appreciating the journal as a sacred inner world for uninhibited wandering and wondering.
If you have a journaling practice that you’d like to share about here, email me at evapberezovsky(at)gmail(dot)com.
imogen oakes
Imogen is a professional tarot reader from Scotland. Under the name of Sapling Tarot, they write (sporadically) on Substack, make (less sporadic) videos on YouTube, and have a monthly podcast where they discuss tarot with neurodivergent guests. When they’re not writing or talking, you can find them eating toast, making mini zines, or scrolling on Pinterest.
origins
I’ve been a notebook/stationery person for as long as I can remember, treasuring stickers as if they were jewels, never letting myself “waste” them. And I’ve always been someone who writes — a writer perhaps? I don’t know if I’d go that far.
I recently wrote a bit of a stream-of-consciousness personal essay about my history with journaling, suffice to say I have a bit of baggage around the concept and process.
language
As someone who relishes specificity of language, I use the words “planner,” “diary,” “notebook,” and “journal” far more interchangeably than I would like. But when I actually think about it, rather than letting my mouth run away with me, I do feel distinctions between them:
Planner, a noun. “I need to sit down with my planner and figure this out.” A specific notebook (currently a black Leuchhturm1917 120g dotgrid notebook) holding my monthly and weekly calendars. I log everything from year-ahead tarot readings to media logs to lists of birds I’ve seen.
Diary, a noun. “I’ll pop that straight into my diary so I don’t forget.” Synonymous (mainly) with both “calendar” and “planner.” I do not consider my analogue recording of my deepest darkests to be a “diary.”
Notebook, a noun. “Ooh, this new project will require a new notebook.” A catch-all for thoughts. They accumulate in various stacks, shelves and drawers around my bedroom/office.
Journaling, both a noun and a verb. “That’s something I’ll have to journal about later.” The book we’re focusing on here, where I take time out of my day to talk to myself on the page.
medium & material
I’m currently in a PaperBlanks dot-grid journal that I found in the end-of-year sales. It’s not my usual thing in terms of cover design, but I really enjoy the smooth, cream, dot-grid paper inside. I’ve been a dot-grid person since the rise of the bullet journal system.
In terms of utensils, I’m primarily a pencil person, despite a truly ludicrous collection of various pens (collected under the category of “art supplies”), but this year I’ve dipped a toe into entry-level fountain pens and have been really enjoying using a Kaweco Perkeo with a fine nib, currently inked with Diamine’s Earl Grey. Visually, their exteriors hardly “go,” but the sensory experience is delightful.
If I’m out of the house and want to write, I have a dot-grid insert in my passport-size Traveler’s Notebook, which I use as a wallet, and a Zebra Sarasa gel pen in Sepia Black.
routine
As close to 10pm as possible, I switch off whichever TV programme I’m currently making my way through — currently on a first-ever watch-through of Buffy, if you’re curious. I put away my laptop and reach under my bedside table to pull out my journal, where it lives snuggled up with my planner, my commonplace book, and at least six other notebooks attached to various projects at any one time.
I take my chosen pen out of a mug that sits next to my bedside lamp. The mug is absolutely full of pens but I will choose the same one every time. I then sit crosslegged on my bed for between fifteen minutes and half an hour and write a page of whatever is going on in my mind on that day.
I generally stick to a page so I don’t get too ruminate-y. If I’m sitting there, pen in hand, and don’t know what I want to write about, I do the Morning Pages trick of writing about how I don’t know what to write about, or that I’ve forgotten what it was that I wanted to write about.
Sometimes, depending on how into the book I’m reading I am, I don’t write at all and I skip straight to reading, but this is the window of time where any routine journal writing happens.
purpose
Whenever my brain gets too loud and the threads begin to unravel, I find myself pulled back to pen and paper to try and make sense of things. I have snatches of memories of spilling my guts onto a page over the years, only really coming to it in times of deep loneliness or crisis, and in the aftermath of deaths (of both people and relationships) mostly.
In this newest chapter of my Journaling Life, I’m writing whatever I want and challenging my inner censors and surveillance systems, because I am now an adult (it dawns on me only now in my thirties). No one in my life would read what gets scribbled down in my journal — not in the least because my handwriting has really gone downhill.
I’ve been regularly committing my inner monologue (did you know not everyone has an inner monologue?) to paper for nearly four months now and it feels healing and liberating in more ways than I expected.
rereading
I don’t make a habit of rereading my journal entries. Sometimes I will flick back a few pages if I can’t remember how long I’ve been feeling a certain way, but I don’t reread in detail, if anything I try to make it easier to avoid rereading by always keeping the ribbon markers on the next clean page.
I think about revisiting other old notebooks and journals sometimes. When my entries were scattered through my planner it was easier to stumble across them, and so often they just made me feel so deeply sad. That would probably be different now, because I’m generally not as sad as I once was and I write about a variety of topics rather than just moments of crisis, but still, they aren’t really written to be read.
a recent entry
Saying that, here’s something I wrote the other day:
“I feel as though I have a lot to remember at the moment but I don’t necessarily think it’s true, just more of a feeling of slight overwhelm. Perhaps I need to exercise letting more ideas go, or having a separate place away from my usual calendars and lists so it doesn’t feel so muddy. I need to bundle the mugwort soon before it dries completely. I think the bats are out again this evening, but it’s already too dark to see them.”
@evaberezovsky
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evapberezovsky(at)gmail(dot)com
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