A First Look At My 2020 Journal | Neeltje’s Thoughts: Journaling

Journaling. Never I thought I would be doing this as a twenty four year old. As a little kid I loved keeping a journal. After a couple of years I thought it cost way too much time and I’d rather be sleeping at the end of the day instead of writing in my journal what I experienced that day. But you don’t have to keep a daily journal. A weekly, monthly or whenever journal is also fine. Since I wanted to do something creative with the memories I made in 2020, I thought I would get a journal and write, hand letter and stick stuff in it whenever I wanted. So, that’s exactly what I did! I love the way it’s starting to look, so to inspire you, here are the first couple of spreads from my 2020 journal!

Let’s start with the most obvious question: Why did I start a journal for 2020? Well, I love to be creative and I’ve missed browsing through magazine and cutting out different fonts and pictures. This is something I used to do all the time when I was younger. A creative I follow on Instagram and I adore is Katy Bellotte. Katy keeps a journal and not only writes in it but also uses pictures and prints to fill the pages. That’s what inspired me to keep a journal myself. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up writing in it every single day, so just whenever I did something or went somewhere. And that’s the story how I got my idea and actually started this journaling journey.

⊹ Jan 2020

2020 started very relaxed for me. Maybe a little too relaxed looking back… but that’s okay. At the beginning of every year I like to have some things to look forward to. Just in the first month of this year, I already did a lot. And the most memorable things I actually used to create spreads with in my journal.

↣ January 3: I got my very first scratch card and didn’t win anything haha. To clarify, I didn’t buy it. I won it and I will never buy one because the chance you win, is so small. However, it was an exciting experience haha.

↣ January 3: On the same day I actually also bought my beloved Marc Jacobs Snapshot bag. This was definitely a big purchase for me but I am still in love with it, so it’s a good impulse buy.

↣ January 5: This was such a fun day because my friends and I went ice skating in Rotterdam! I really wanted to go ice skating, so we combined Anouk’s and my birthdays and celebrated on ice.

↣ January 14: At the beginning of every year we go out for dinner with my work to celebrate the new year. This time we went to Mama Kelly in The Hague.

↣ January 25: Eline found this stunning vintage store in Amsterdam and really wanted to visit it. So, of course I volunteered and spotted so many beautiful pieces.

⊹ Feb 2020

Looking back on February and the pages of my journal that are filled with this month shows how busy it actually was. Almost every week(end) I had different things planned with friends and family. I surprised myself because most of the time I am home and that’s fine by me. But this month was crazy and a lot of fun!

↣ February 5: This day wouldn’t have been my granddad’s birthday and we still celebrate this day by going out for dinner with my grandma, uncle and aunt.

↣ February 7: This was the first day the sun really came out and it was pretty warm. It was like the first chilly spring day. I took some outfit photos with Lotte and then went for lunch with Isabella. Such a lovely day!

↣ February 14: The day of love: Valentine’s Day. Since I am very grateful for my grandma, I spent Valentine’s Day with her. We went to the garden centre (our fave thing to do together) and had lunch together. A perfect Valentine’s Day for me.

↣ February 15: The next day Claudia and I spontaneously took the the train to The Hague! We took some photos for our Instagram accounts and had coffee (well, I had water) at Palmette.

↣ February 20: Oh my, I was looking forward to this day because Isabella and I were going to the Jonas Brothers concert in Amsterdam. It was so much fun! I want to relive this night so bad… Luckily I have a lot of videos to rewatch if I want to.

↣ February 21: After the most fun night at the concert, I got up the next day and visited Naturalis in Leiden with my mom and grandma. After that, we had a high tea at Vinteage, which was super tasty.

↣ February 24: Yay, who doesn’t love a good girls night? After work Claudia and I went to Cityhall in Leiden and had dinner with Dani. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months, so we had a lot to catch up on over dinner!

⊹ Mar 2020

After a busy February, at the beginning of March it kind of continued the same. Besides that, spring finally came through! The weather got better but at the same time something else was creeping in and that put an hold on other planned things…

↣ March 1: Last minute Elba asked me to join her and her brother to go to a basketball game in Rotterdam. That’s not something I would say no to. I love basketball games and Elba and I used to go to them so often, so it was nice to do again!

↣ March 6: Another spontaneous outing was a day in Amsterdam with Claudia were we first visited a Goodiebox event, then had lunch at De Wasserette and took photos at the pretty canals of Amsterdam. A full on blogger/Instagram day!

↣ March 7: I am very much into crystals and now Claudia is also into crystals. So, when we saw there was a big crystal market near The Hague, we thought it would be fun to go. In the end I bought a couple of new crystals and was overwhelmed with the amount of crystals there…

I am still very busy with filling this journal, even though I have not been doing many activities or going places. This crazy time is also something I want to incorporate into the journal, but in a fun way. So, in time I will definitely share another update of my 2020 journal. After creating this blog post I can’t wait to start working on it again… Have you ever kept a journal? Would you also keep one like mine to stay creative?

Love,

Neeltje