Reached 400 handwritten journal pages on a cheap $6 notebook and I finally get why people say the paper matters
Started a daily journal habit 14 months ago with a plain $6 lined notebook from the grocery store, mostly just dumping 3 or 4 sentences before bed. Hit page 400 this past Sunday and flipped back through the first 50 pages, and the ink from March had bled through so bad I could barely read my own notes. Turns out the cheap 60 gsm paper just soaks up the ink from my Pilot G2 and ghosts on the back side, so half my early pages are basically unreadable now. Switched to a $14 notebook with 100 gsm paper about 6 months in and the difference in how the pen glides is honestly wild. The weird part is I care less about the nice notebook now, because the messy bleed through pages are kind of a record of when I was still figuring out what to write about. Has anyone else kept a journal long enough to notice their handwriting change, and did you switch paper brands when it did?
The bleed through pages being a timeline of your early attempts is such a cool way to look at it. Kind of like rings on a tree, where the messy years are still part of the story. Bet the paper weight thing matters less once the words start meaning more to you.