How a Summer Journal Can Help Keep The Holiday Mood Going

Why Summer is such a mood

Summer can be a uniquely positive time of the year, perhaps more so than the resolution-setting fever of January or the cleaning and organising that comes around springtime. The longer days give us literally more hours in the day and the summer frame of mind makes us get up earlier or stay up later; reach for fruit over chocolate; book in times to see far-flung relations or hold get-togethers with our friends just because the sun is out; we take our children to parks or forests or local heritage sites just for the need to not be inside. While the glorious weather may play a large part in this, there’s also the feel-good aspect of the season that makes us feel more prepared - and motivated - to live a slower, healthier lifestyle.

So where do summer journals come into this?

Journaling, overall, is good for your health. Combine it with the joy of Summer (there’s a reason they call it a sunshine state of mind!) and you’ve got a winning, mental health boosting addition to your life. Plus, we always tend to look back on the memories we make during the busier summer months, whether you are vacationing or not, and recording them in a beautiful notebook can be a wonderful keepsake that you’ll cherish in a few years time. If the idea of a dear-diary style summer journal seems much too daunting (and brings up memories of cut and paste travel journals from childhood) you could rename it your summer notebook, and create something that is part diary, part commonplace book, part receptacle of receipts and memories and photographs. What is it about the warmer months that make us believe that anything is possible? Why is it on the sun lounger under a foreign sun that we come up with our most beautiful, brilliant ideas for the future? And, most importantly, is there a way we can capture and prolong this feeling of equanimity and optimism? We think so. Enter - the summer journal.

Holiday Journaling: a perfect way to explore your thoughts

When you’re on holiday, you’re not just switched off from the daily stresses of work and routine, you’re also switched on to new experiences: new tastes, new places, new people. And when was the last time you truly did something for the first time? Even the choice of book or magazine you finally have time to read can give you a new point of view, especially if it is something outside your usual topic of interest or of a lifestyle vastly different to your own. It is this adventurous spirit, combined with a more relaxed state of mind, that is infusing you with new ideas for how you want to spend your time on this earth - either in huge, quantifiable ways such as changing career or moving home, to smaller, but no less important ways - eating better, spending more time with family. Keeping a journal, either during your vacation or during Summer as a whole, can help you explore these feelings, and maybe form them from free-floating ideas to actual solid plans. Who knows, maybe it’ll open a floodgate to some real, tangible life changing decisions.

A summer journal can help you have a digital detox

Journaling, of course, is an analogue pastime, and the popularity of unplugged vacations is growing. If there is a time when you want to be present and in the moment, it is on your annual vacation. Scrolling through other people’s lives on your phone is fine as a distraction from the daily routine, but do you really want to spend your hard-earned free time (not to mention the cost of the holiday) not really being there? If you are committing to writing to your journal regularly, that knowledge sits at the forefront of your mind throughout the day, making you engage more with the smaller details of life - the shade of bougainvillaea growing in Spain, a particularly silly joke your youngest child shared, the unusual name of the nail varnish you polished your toes with - things that you may have noticed before but forgot about straight after, or something that would usually have passed you by. Sure, if you don’t have a camera (or better yet, a Polaroid!) use your phone to capture images of your holiday, but maybe turn the internet off. The world will not collapse if you are unreachable for a few days, and I promise you, time will slow down when you don’t spend it staring at a screen.

Summer & holiday journals can help you swerve the holiday blues & keep the vacation vibes going

Holiday blues are a reality for a lot of us, especially if the trip was particularly spectacular or meaningful. Keeping a journal of your time there can solidify the memories, even if you just list snippets of the trip - the food you ate, how the fish felt when they nibbled your toes in the sea, the exact name of that clifftop you watched the sunset from. By putting together your vacation journal, you are prolonging that holiday feeling, the calm that comes from thinking about something other than your everyday life, and it can help you transition from holiday mode back into your regular routine a lot gentler than trying to forget your holiday entirely.

Summer journaling offers you time alone with your thoughts

If you are a parent, then Summertime and holidays look a little different. Journaling can allow you a little space that is all your own - something which can be much needed at a time when you don’t have the separation that going to work usually offers you. Even ten minutes sitting by a sunlit window with your summer journal and a fancy pen can be enough to gather your thoughts or scribble down about your day. Another thing that usually gets pushed aside in our everyday lives is the opportunity to be creative. Now the magic of a summer journal is that it doesn’t just have to contain your thoughts and memories. It could also be a receptacle of your creative endeavours. Use the time at that sun-bleached cafe table in Palermo to try out a bit of sketching, or scribble out a paragraph of creative writing on what you can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel from where you are sitting. It’ll give you a chance to stretch your skills, and also create a unique way of documenting your holiday. If not on an actual holiday, why not use the longer days of Summer to get up earlier or stay up later and dedicate a small amount of time to a creative project? It doesn’t need to be fancy. Projects such as the #100dayproject work because of their simplicity - make one piece of art (in whatever format you like: writing, music, sketching, scrapbooking, even finger painting) and by the end of Summer you’ll have a notebook you can flip through, with the memory of each moment jumping out at you from every composition. However you decide to record, prolong or celebrate your Summer, make sure you choose a journal that encapsulates your summer mood. Our new range features a collaboration with Ciao Chiara and is reminiscent of the lazy sunshine afternoons with a glass of rosé, the pastel shades of gelato and public swimming baths, and the vintage advertising of the Italian coastline. All designs which make the notebooks perfect for summer journaling: whether you have plans for far flung adventures or golden hour picnics in the park. If your plans do revolve around a lot of travel, you’ll be glad to know that all of our A5 notebooks slot beautifully into our leather compendiums, keeping your pages safe, and allowing you room to carry around a few stickers, washi tape swatches or to store any ephemera you pick up along the way.