Introduction

So, this is the end of the Journaling January event for 2026.

It's been a long thirty-one days, and I am not even certain how many people actually followed along with the event. I have been happy to see many of the prompt posts getting quite a few likes, so I have to believe there were people that were following along.

Personal Recap

Let me lead the way on this one, and if you were participating, please add comments about your own experience below.

A couple W's:

1. Personally, I was happy that I was able to keep to writing every single day. Even during the FediWriMo event last year, I had a day when I didn't write anything, so sticking to my guns and writing even when I didn't feel like it was a win for me.

2. Another win: writing more than the stated goal. Yes, it got out of hand a few times (eleven pages in one day?). But most of the time I was writing just what I wanted to get down on the page. If it took three pages, fine. If it took seven pages, okay.

3. Finding something meaningful in the prompts to write about. I didn't mention this as much as I could have, but while I didn't always sit down to write based on one of the prompts, I found them working their way into my entries. That was something I hadn't considered... Just letting them come up in the natural flow of my writing.

A couple of L's:

1. I didn't really improve my penmanship. I was hoping that writing this much would help. But the idea of writing cleanly and getting the thoughts down on the page really seem to be at odds with each other.

2. The prompt images. Yeah, okay, they weren't good at first. I had to redo them to make them more readable. Lesson learned.

3. And, I will say this, some of the entries in my journal this month have more "fluff" in them than I would have liked. It seems like there were times when I was trying to get an idea on the page, but I just couldn't get the ideas to coalesce properly.

In Closing

So, that's the end of the event for this year. Did you follow along? Did you use any of the prompts? let us know about your experiences below.

Actually, it sounds like you got journaling just fine. The idea is to write whatever is on your mind, and just keep going. Over time you will find that what you write about will change -- you'll have different thoughts and things that you want to think about on the page, and not have conversations about.

My earlier journaling work is filled with all sorts of ramblings about projects I was working on, or ideas about things that I would like to see created. Over time that has given away to thinking about other things that are more reflective of where I am in my life.