new year, new journal prompts

daily journal prompts for january

Happy New Year!! I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. but I do believe in learning about yourself through writing. Every January, I find myself spending more time with my journal—reflecting on the past year, setting small goals for myself, and compiling lists of what I want to read or write about. Rather than approach the moment when December turns to January as a time to completely overhaul my life and create goals or processes that can completely rid me of everything I don’t like about my life, I look at the new year as a time to reflect on the important moments or ideas from the last, to see what I can carry with me into the next year.

from before sunrise one of my 4 favorite movies

Rather than resolutions, I write the sappiest, most unintelligible journal entry of the year sometime between December 31 and January 4, usually focusing on everything good or bad that I experienced during the last year and my takeaways from them. Sometimes it’s as simple as “I lost my favorite mascara. It ruined my life for a week” but often I take memories I’ve treasured or tried to erase and ruminate on them. It’s a deeply cathartic process, usually tearful, but after I feel like a weight has been lifted off of my chest.

In the spirit of openness and honesty, I’ll share a few of my writing-centric goals for the year with you:

• Reach out to lit mags and get a piece published in one

• Write one personal essay a month for my eyes only

• 10k Substack subscribers

• Connect with more writers

• Fully flesh out an essay collection

I did not have an easy 2024, and I’m 100% sure 2025 will have its own challenges, but I’m going to get through regardless. I’m proud of everything I accomplished and I’m excited to continue doing this (whatever it is) in the next year.

my first big project of 2025!

I think reading is genuinely what keeps me sane. I think book clubs are such important community spaces and incredibly chic, and I want to foster that space through my platform. I tried to do a book club through discord/instagram, but in full transparency: it wasn’t organized enough for me. From now on, I’m going to be using Fable, as it basically organizes itself. There’s space for discussions, quotes, and communication, so I am excited to announce the re-launch of my book club! For January we’ll be reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the 2024 Booker Prize winner and I am beyond excited to read and discuss with you!

To join, use this link or the button below! It is 100% free and offers a $5 ebook credit towards purchasing the book (also you should follow my account because I’m going to be using it for reviewing books as well 🤍)

this is what you came here for:

Every month I write up daily journal prompts for my paid subscribers, and for 2025, I’m trying to come up with a theme or some kind of factor that ties the month together. For this month’s journal prompts, I wanted to center them around the concept of reflecting and resetting. Maybe this is the time you turn the page in your journal and start fresh or maybe you decide now is the time you’re going to get into journaling for good, but regardless of your intention, these prompts are meant to inspire you and your writing. They’re starting points, little diving boards for you to jump off of into the bigger pools of your creativity.

Paid subscribers have access to my discord server to discuss our writing (the link at the bottom of this) and to foster our own little community! I’m hopeful that these prompts will inspire your writing, even if you choose to use them without participating in the writing conversations. I aim for them to make you have conversations with yourself, and by the end of the month feel stronger, more confident, and excited about your writing. See you next month!!