An Empty Journal
I have been a journaler since 2017.
It started as an extension and discipline of my faith: a time of devotion and prayer, documentation of notes and wisdom learned. I keep notes during sermons and Bible lessons to help me focus and recall things. It developed into a space for personal documentation beyond my faith, and professional productivity. I tracked tasks and lists, notes for projects, and conversations with people (some of you could find your own name and a quote from you).
For the last 8 years, I generally kept two journals at one time: personal and professional. I would start a new one for my personal life every January, and I would continue the professional one until it was full. Many of my blogs start as a thought, idea, or reflection that can be found in one of my journals.
At the end of 2025, I was using the back cover of my latest journal, squeezing lists into tiny margins of space, for my professional tasks and notes and reflections. It was time to turn to a new journal. At the same time, my personal journal was due for a new space. So in December 2025, I made a decision that is new for me:
one journal to rule them all…
I started a fresh journal with the plan of maintaining it as one consolidated space for all my notes, personal and professional alike.
So far, I have enjoyed some aspects of it. I went with a slimmer notebook, a dot journal like my previous ones, and of course I had to get a pack of my favorite pens. I carry this journal with me everywhere, and jot some notes in it almost daily, often two or three times in a day.
There is a joy that comes with an empty journal. It resembles the potential of what is ahead. It stands as a space for boundless creativity and contemplative reflection.
It is a motivator to do something worth writing about.
You might not be a journaler (a conversation for a different day), but you might have symbols like this in your own life. Maybe it’s a blank calendar with potential for plans. Maybe it’s a made bed in the morning symbolizing you’re ready to take on the day, or a tank full of gas that posits dreams of places worth driving to. Maybe you’re not looking at the poetry of life enough to see all that lies ahead of you, and the blank canvas this is before you.
In a calendar year, you get 52 weeks. Despite the complaints and desires for more hours in the day, we all get the same amount of time: 24 hours. So as you look at your blank journal, your blank calendar, or whatever stirs your heart with the idea of possibilities, what will you do with your time?
My challenge for you: do something worth journaling about.
Don’t sit around waiting for something to happen. Be proactive and ambitious; make something happen. As I read back through my journals, I see so many days where I did the same old, same old. That’s a normal part of life. I also look back and see the days where I stepped out, I did something audacious; I served wholeheartedly and spoke with such care; I ran with conviction and lived with a burden.
If I look back at 2026 and see nothing substantial, nothing that stirs my heart and brings joy, nothing that impacted the lives of others, then I believe I missed the mark big time.
My empty journal is a blank canvas for my life. As I fill it with notes and lists, tasks and names, reflections and prayers, hopes and dreams, my life is played out around it. It is my job to make sure I am living a life worth writing about, and maybe a life worth reading about one day.