What Does A Notebook Do That Social Media Can't?

how I've been feeling lately about Instagram, my phone, and writing things down on paper

Dec 14, 2023

Back in 2017 and 2018, I kept a bullet journal. If you don’t know what a bullet journal is, it’s like a planner, but you design the layouts yourself. You get a blank notebook and write in the days, the months, the years, creating a space for your daily errands and tasks. It can be as simple or as highly-decorated as you like.

Every week I’d sit down with my pens, tapes, scissors and magazines, and craft up a new container for the next seven days. Normally I’d have some music on in the background, maybe a candle going. And it was nice. It was quiet time, away from a screen, focussed on making something pretty and organised.

During this time I also had a social media account for my bullet journal. I posted every day like it was a religion. I had cracked the algorithm and knew exactly what to do to grow my following, and I enjoyed being on social media in this way a lot. People loved my journal! At its height, I had nearly 9000 followers, and every time I posted, I regularly got a slew of comments saying things like, “lovely!” “so cute!” “wow!” I was even featured in a few blogs, and had materials sent to me for free. It felt validating.

After 2018, the bullet journalling trailed off. I’d moved apartments and didn’t have a big desk to work on anymore. I’d gone through a breakup which had prompted me to start writing music again. I’d been going through songwriter’s block for a couple of years beforehand and journaling had been my placeholder for an artistic outlet during that time. I tried to share my songs with my 9000 followers, they didn’t care for them much. I stopped posting to my bullet journal Instagram account. I kept notebooks but filled them with messy lyrics instead — nothing pretty, nothing worth sharing unless it had been turned into a song.

I’ve never bullet journaled since. At the beginning of every year I buy a new notebook, crack it open and wonder, “will this be the year I take up again?”

🪞 When Social Media Feels Antisocial

I keep a notebook now but it’s not a bullet journal, it’s not an art journal, it’s just… a notebook filled with stuff. I share bits of it from time to time, but I would never post this notebook to social media in the way I used to with my bullet journal. Partially because I want space to be more open and honest in my notebooks — I don’t want to censor myself before I mark the page — but the main reason is because I’ve fallen out of love with social media, thanks to some thinkpieces on Substack (shoutout to

Seth Werkheiser

Alex Dobrenko`

and

Offline Time

) and my own experiences with TikTok and Instagram.

I have spent too much time on social media. Before I deleted Instagram from my phone, I used to pick it up, check my Instagram, scroll, scroll, scroll, then exit the app, go into Facebook, scroll, scroll, scroll, exit the app, open Substack, scroll, scroll, scroll, exit the app so I could go do something else, then just think, okay let me check Instagram one more time before closing my phone just in case someone’s left a comment or replied to a message, and then start the cycle again. I am not being hyperbolic when I say I have lost HOURS of my life to this circuitry. And don’t get me started on the periods I had TikTok downloaded to my phone. That was frightening.

I wonder, what is it for? As a musician, I post on social media so that people find my music and go, “nice! I want to listen to this artist and buy her merch and come to her shows.” So I try to stay active on Instagram. But looking back at the last year, the biggest successes I’ve had have come from funding, emails and live shows. None of them came from opportunities facilitated by social media.

But I like social media as a way of documenting my life. Or, I’ve liked it. Ever since I was a teenager I kept diaries, took pictures, drew things, kept notes and letters and paper keepsakes. I was all about documenting my life, for me more than anyone else. Instagram has been a way of keeping track of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and the good times I’ve had over the last few years. But… it’s not the same, is it?

🦷 The Dental Textbook of Solace

When I was sixteen I kept a diary on my laptop, then would print out the text files and paste them into an old dental textbook (we had a few around the house, my parents were dentists). I called this diary, The Book. And it was the place I’d go to when I felt sad, angry, or down. Cutting and pasting in passages from my diary, slathering black paint around the edges, gluing glitter, stars, even Facebook photos of the people I was writing about (LOL this truly was for my eyes only), was my way of dealing with the big feelings I’d have as a teenager. The Book detailed my final year of school, my enduring crush on one Canadian boy, my panic about friendships, worries about growing up, musings over who was going to invite me to prom, etc. The rest was the textbook — instructions on how to give fillings and graphic imagery of misaligned teeth. The Book was a retelling of the best and worst parts of my final year of school, and it was my solace: a place I could go to.

🛒 Lost In The Mall

On an almost daily basis, I mistake social media as my solace. Nowadays it’s my place to go to, but when I get there, it’s like being lost in a shopping mall with no exits. I get emotional amnesia, where I forget any uncomfortable feeling I have, it just gets shoved beneath the surface. On social media I can share parts of my life, like I would in a diary or notebook, but there’s never that feeling of release.

I don’t know about you but I have never come off of Instagram thinking, “thank god I got that off my chest.” A selfie or a clip of a song that I’ve written and released isn’t my truth. It’s me feeding the endless stream. It’s advertising!

And somewhere in the world, one of my friends or internet mutuals is caught up in the scroll, scroll, scroll, trying to shift off a bad feeling to the point where they forget what it is they came to their phone for, and my post will come up. They’ll leave a comment or watch the video a couple times. And I’m keeping them on the app. I’m adding to The Shopping Mall of No Return.

The images I’ve been sharing in this post come from a little notebook I’ve kept since May this year. I go to it to make pretty pictures and collages, I have written down dreams in it, I’ve written down things which have made me happy, sad, excited and scared. I’ve kept track of my goals. I’ve written manifestation lists. I’ve drawn pictures of Batman and Grimace. I’ve treated it as an imperfect place to go to, and I’ve tried to instil a feeling of privacy and safety in it. Nobody has to see what I write inside.

Cartoonist Lynda Barry once said that ‘a notebook is a place.’ Historically, notebooks have been my places. I want to return to them.

Social media is not a place. Or if it is, it’s that crazy shopping mall where everything is moving, shouting at you, and you have a wave of amnesia every time you enter.

If I want to go to a place, I want it to be a cosy place. I want to light a candle. I want to have some comfy music going on in the background. I want to share my secrets, my dreams, my doodles, my brainwaves. Embarrassing things. Funny things. True things. Awkwardly beautiful things.

I want to be able to feel things in this place, rather than an absence of feelings.

I want to spend time in this place, not lose time.

So, maybe bullet journaling in 2024. Maybe art journaling. Maybe just showing up to a blank page and scribbling until something interesting happens, or I feel like I’ve gotten something off my chest.

I still am trying to figure out how to wade through social media as a musician in order to share my music, but not lose myself or my time in the process. But I do know that writing this newsletter to you every week is helping a lot. It feels a more honest way of sharing what I do, and I hope you feel that authenticity here, too.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for contributing to this place.

📝 WEEKLY QUESTION FREE-FOR-ALL

What’s your relationship with social media like?
What’s your relationship with journaling like?
If you could change one thing about the way you spend your time on social media, what would it be?
What other thoughts or feelings did this newsletter bring up for you?

a constellation

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