The ADHD Journal Confessional

Finding the Inbetweenies One Page at a Time

Hi, I'm Brooke, and I'm an ADHD journal collector. There, I SAID IT!

There are a lot.

I have spent years buying beautiful journals, carefully putting them somewhere safe, and then refusing to write in them like they were Beanie Babies or the Barbie you weren't allowed to take out of the box because what if it was worth money someday?

I see a beautiful journal and immediately decide, THIS is the one!!!

This is the journal that will change my life. I will wake up early, make coffee, sit somewhere peaceful, and write three thoughtful pages every morning. I will reflect. I will grow. I will become the kind of person who journals every damn day.

Then I bring it home. I admire it. I put it somewhere safe.

It collects dust.

Eventually, I regift it.

You're welcome.

(I KNOW I am not alone in this. Many of you have done your journal confessional with me!)

This is what journaling with ADHD has often looked like for me. My brain loves a fresh start, a beautiful notebook, and the possibility of becoming an entirely different person by Monday.

What my brain does not love is doing the same thing every day.

Every. Damn. Day.

Daily journaling sounds simple until I miss one day. Then one missed day becomes three. Three becomes two weeks. Suddenly, opening the journal feels less like writing and more like facing a tiny, disappointed paper authority figure.

"Where have you been?"

I do not need that kind of judgment from stationery. I get enough of that from my dog.

Dirty little secret?

My favorite journal isn't actually a journal.

It's a white steno pad.

That's where my brain seems happiest. The fancy journals get admired.

The steno pad gets used.

For years, my journaling was full of doodles, scattered thoughts, grocery lists pretending to be journal entries, and dramatic "Dear Diary" moments. Honestly, it was entertaining.

But it wasn't really helping me.

Then something changed. I found a simple 90 day gratitude journal that asked me the same questions every day. At first, I thought that sounded terrible. The same questions? For ninety days?

Apparently, that was exactly what my brain needed.

Gone were the blank pages waiting for profound thoughts. Gone was the pressure to write something meaningful enough to deserve beautiful stationery.

The questions were already there. All I had to do was answer them.

I started getting clear about what I was grateful for. Not what I thought I should be grateful for. Not what would sound thoughtful if someone else happened to read it.

At first, I think I was still trying to come up with impressive answers. You know, the kind that sound deep enough to deserve being printed on a Pinterest graphic.

Then I realized something. Nobody was grading this thing. There wasn't a right answer.

So eventually I quit writing what sounded good and started writing what was actually true. Some days the answer was big. Some days it was that my coffee stayed hot, Rosie made me laugh, or I found a parking spot that didn't require a three mile hike.

Turns out, they all counted.

One Last Confession!

If you've made it this far, you probably won't be surprised to learn that I have opinions about stationery. Strong opinions.

I have an unhealthy attachment to good pens. I will absolutely judge a pen by how it writes. I own enough sticky notes to supply a small office.

And don't even get me started on page flags.

Do I own more journals than one person reasonably should?

Absolutely.

Do I use every single one?

(We don't need to answer that.)

The pens and sticky notes? Those absolutely get used.

The journals?

Well...they mostly look pretty.

If you're curious, I put together a list of my favorite journaling supplies in my Amazon storefront. These aren't random recommendations. They're the pens I buy over and over again, the sticky notes I can't seem to function without, the page flags that somehow end up in every book I own, and yes...the humble white steno pad that gets used far more than any of my beautiful journals ever have.

Because if you're going to collect stationery, you might as well collect the good stuff.

At this point I've spent so much time collecting journals that I probably owe the world one of my own.

Maybe someday I'll publish The Inbetweenies: the questions that finally convinced me to stop saving journals for "someday" and start filling them one page at a time.

Click the Brooke the Nerd Approved Seal to get to my Amazon Store!