I giggled at the comments about moleskine elastics not keeping your knickers up. I hate moleskine. I love Leuchtturm & it was my first introduction to dotted grid notebooks. I like MD notebooks but prefer the MD paper in traveler’s notebook sizing. I use gel pens when out & about and fountain pens at home, those TN books deal with both well. I’m a recent convert to Hobonichis because of the Tomoe River Paper. I am more likely to use a notebook that feels nice & looks good, regardless of cost

Glad you found the Standard size useful! 😊 My traveler’s notebook is by September Leather, much cheaper than the original ones (mine has a rigid spine, which I prefer).

I use a pocket size leuchtern 1917 in a chic sparrow cover for my journaling currently and will soon switch to an A6 Stalogy in a chic sparrow for variety. I do prefer to write with a fountain pen so the paper matters Thanks for your channel. I'm enjoying it.

where’s your pen case/holder from?

I have stocked up on some outdated daily planners from past years. They were $2 with 365 pages in them. I plan to white out the dates and just use them as i wish.

Add on comment; Kokuyo campus also make great loose leaf paper for cheap. Use the A4 sized ones to make your Traveler's notebook refills. However this only works with either plain, dotted or grid layout because you fold the paper in half. I just fold about 20 sheets at a time, use kraft paper as a cover, staple the centre then trim off the excess with a box cutter. It makes for a shorter refill but doable for my travel journaling.

I just got myself a Midori 2025 Diary and yes it was pricey. But it’s more for fountain pen enthusiasts so that is reflected in the price point. The same with the Leuchtturm, but Midori even holds up to heavy tombow brush pens. For a brain dump, my cheap alternative are the notebooks from Daiso with smooth paper (ones that say Made in Japan); surprisingly also fountain friendly and cost far less than a cup of coffee. I’ve stopped spending my good money on moleskine, couldn’t even hold up to my fine gel pen and ghosts like mad.

I am a fountain pen enthusiast and paper is important since so many notebooks are not fountain pen ink friendly, Moleskine is one of those and it breaks my heart. Along with their wonderful design, they used to have great paper, but not now. It is very disappointing. I write A LOT and tend to use Clairefontaine French ruled paper, but for personal writing, I like Midori paper. It is a little ... toothy and expensive, but a few years ago, I found a place here in Canada that had a sale. I bought 12. I, too, enjoy the bendy covers. You have a great collection. Thanks for sharing and making your review. - roc

I journal in a Traveler's Company Traveler's Journal. I also have a 5 year prayer journal that I use. October will make a year of use with that one.

I'm in Canada and I've found some really nice notebooks at the dollar store. It seems like every time I go theres more selection and you can get one for $1-4!

"Some people might actually be shouting at the screen ..." ?? Are you kidding??? Yikes! My jaw dropped in horror and I nearly passed out watching you tear into that beautiful notebook! But, Then, I took a calming breath, and started to imagine what I could do to cover the raw, ragged, furry spine with a beautiful paper or something. I will re think... Plus, this video made me subscribe. - roc

For morning pages, I've been using Dynta A5 spiral notebooks. I get them from Amazon for less than $2 per in bulk. They are lined, 60 sheets/120 pages. There is a day of the week block to circle the day and also a little block of weather icons which I find very satisfying to use. But the best thing about them is they can handle most of my fountain pen inks. I love writing with a fountain pen and these Dynta books are perfect for me. For my "real" journaling, I use a mix of Midori and Leuchtturm - mostly Midori since I have an awesome leather cover for them now. Sadly, only Moleskines are at my local shops and I've had similar bad experiences with them, especially with regard to ink.

When I first started journaling I did start with slightly better quality journals. I now do the bulk of my journaling on the cheapest a4 writing pads I can get. I then transfer any gems that appear on the page to an A5 moleskin journal for future reference. I also carry a small hardbacked notebook (like the ones you shoe in the video). Great for making notes when out and about. No idea what brand notebook. Not a massive fan of the moleskin journal. And I really wish I had better handwriting 😂.

What's your favourite notebook and why?! If you appreciate this video, you can support my work with Superthanks, above ⬆🙏!

Great video. Thank you

Thank you. Very helpful.

Your positivity is catching! 😊

Wise man 🎉

I'm not a morning person and prefer evening pages. 😄

Buy a softcover A5 you monster. 😆

Long- time pages writer here. Lovely description! Bet you help many to find their way to their notebooks. Good onya. Aloha

I would even use that 3rd page to talk about the struggle to fill the 3rd page. Document the struggle. Document the feelings you’re having, the blocks that come up. Or, do something each day that you will devote to that 3rd page - a new venture, a new project, a new relationship. I get that this is supposed to be a stream of consciousness, but what are you conscious about? Even use that 3rd page to get out of your head and into sights, surroundings, sensations, etc. just some ideas. On the other side of that struggle is growth. Best of luck. A new subscriber and love what I see so far. Cheers!

Could I ask what size this is please? I hear reviewers talk about A5 size, but on the website they don’t show A5, medium looks the closest.

Don’t feel bad about it being leather, vegetable tanned leather a byproduct of the meat industry that would otherwise go into landfill, it will outlive you and can be passed down to the next generation. Unlike ‘vegan leather’ which uses plastic binders to stop it disintegrating. It might outlive you too, but for the wrong reasons.

Love your ingenuity, courage, and skills.

I had this experience when I tried morning pages several years ago. They just started my day off in a negative direction and reinforced the ugly. This time around I’m having more success with a “steered” version. Instead of a ranting monologue, I still rant but conceptualize it as a dialogue with God. It’s still a rant, but when the pen pauses it’s Gods turn to answer what I’ve just written. I find that this allows me to still rant but then also find solutions rather than just wallowing. My body feels so much lighter after I do it this way. Good luck to everyone still figuring this out!

This is genius. I was debating on what A5 cover/folio to get -- this solves my issue. Big thanks!

Your writing can be kept private. Remember this.

Talking is unpredictable ..we sometimes have had enough of that to last a lifetime !!!

This is why expressive writing is better. Write out exactly what you feel, and then you destroy what you wrote immediately after you finish.

I absolutely loved your video. So re-affirming. I have done morning pages for years. It’s so freeing! Thanks for sharing!

How did no one comment on "I'm Spartacus" ? LOL

Hello Martin! I missed your newer vids even though I had subscribed! Ive some catching up to do! When i 1st subscribed I was going to give the MPs a go (again, after many years). In my typical style i gave up after a few days! But........I did end up doing something that i was quite proud of, following that recent attempt at MPs. I was so uncomfortable with my writing that i just had to do something to try sort it out. Writing with any speed meant it was just an awful scrawl. I know that shouldnt matter for that exercise, but it really bothered me! I learned a type of cursive at primary school but switched to print. It must have been cooler to write in print! I decided to go back to cursive. I thought it might be easier (eventually) to write a little faster and more legibly if writing in cursive. I soon found out how much i had forgotten about writing in cursive! I had to buy a book to relearn. For nearly 2 months i practiced each day. Sometimes only for 10 mins sometimes an hour. It was fun to listen to a podcast and practice wrting the words spoken. I have a couple of journals now that read as a lot of nonsense! 😁 cause they are only fragments of sentences. But my cursive looks way better now than when i started out relearning and im much happier with my hand writing. So it might be time now to reattempt the MPs!

This changed my day 💫

I just got an idea before I even watch your video: I could also do a few morning pages where I draw something instead of just writing so I will give that a try since I like to doodle! But the pages so far have helped me clear out all the junk that I probably didn't express on the outside and I felt so much better, and I also realized that I whatever I have been carrying emotionally, I was able to acknowledge it and release it.

Spot on😊 fear of the written voyeur .someone read my teenage diary without permission. Took years to regain perspective about that . Love the idea about markers , highlight perhaps adds depth for me . Trust your away from home job is going well. ❤

Good stuff, Martin. Thanks for sharing. I like the idea of adding a little symbol on the page's margin to signal something useful to come back to!

Oh no. I couldn’t bear to watch. I could feel the book’s pain. I’m sad now.

I was only yelling that the signatures should be taken apart. Destruction? No.. I was licking my chops at the prospect of watching a complete disassembly. I want to try this and turn the cover into a refillable notebook using the liberated signatures from the book block, and eventually whatever else I can get my inky fingers on paperwise. I have a leuchtturm with my name embossed, so I refuse to ever let that go. I've liberated several book covers for repurposing but I would like to know.. do I need a dry run with another leuchtturm before tackling mine..? tfs.. really appreciated this.

I’m learning many haven’t read these✨thank you for this

This can be the case with Meditation as well

I wrote morning pages for a while and I was going through a difficult time in my life, I was depressed and I found that writing morning pages was making me feel worse, not better so I stopped. I think I will start writing them again.

My handwriting is quite small and so I struggle to fill 3 pages. I ended up moving to a Standard size notebook and that helped me 🫢 Am I cheating? 😅

I can't put myself in the mindset of someone who doesn't know know what to write in a "write what's in your mind" situation like this. Do their thoughts completely stop? I doubt it, so why don't they write what they're thinking? "I'm not really sure what else to talk about?" "I've run out of ideas" "What to say? What to say? What to say?" If I ever get stuck my filler phrase will probably be "doo be doo be doo ba doo be doo be doo ba" which is the Doofenshmirt's tune from Phineas and Ferb

Lol, finished within 45 minutes of waking 😂 it took me over an hour when I tried. I wrote on letter sized paper. I thought the recommendation was to write on A4 paper?

But you have to think before your pen makes a mark, how else can I do it without just making swirls 🤔

I know this was posted 9 months ago but this is why I have limited myself 2-3 tasks in each category

What if you cant write, but can type, is there any benifit to doing morning pages?

Dear Martin, I highly enjoy the content of your video’s, one thing I would like to ask you though: why do you add these static snippets to your video? I have a visual impairment and this makes it perhaps more straining to deal with these kind of static elements, (they make me startle, almost jump out of my skin when they come, perhaps also because of the soundbites that accompany them). For me watching your video’s would be a more comfortable experience if those were not in there. The multiple camera angles in this particular video also make it harder for me to focus on the message you want to share. Is there a reason why you put in these aspects in your video’s? Is it to spice them up or does it help others to focus better perhaps? Would love to hear your perspective on this! Kind regards and keep sharing your valuable insights!