Daily is Flexible

Kick off 2025 by learning how Your Story Matters

Hi friends,

When I first started making Daily Pages, I thought daily meant every single day without fail. If I skipped one, I’d convince myself I had broken the whole thing. That guilt spiraled fast—I’d tell myself there was something wrong with me if I couldn’t even find five minutes. And the longer I stayed away, the harder it was to come back.

The breakthrough came when I noticed that my weekdays and weekends had completely different rhythms. On weekdays, I had space at noon to slip into my studio. On weekends? Forget it. That wasn’t failure—it was just reality. And once I let myself see that, “daily” stopped being about rigid streaks and started being about flexibility.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this email:

• Why “daily” doesn’t mean perfection

• How my own routine bends with life

• Ways you can choose your own rhythm

The First Time I Came Back

After one of those guilt-soaked breaks, I sat down and made a page—and it hit me. Daily Pages weren’t a giant project. They were an entry point. The easiest possible doorway back into creativity. That’s what pulled me back, again and again: the reminder that small counts.

These days, my “daily” means weekdays at noon. I’ve got a standing date with a few fellow Daily Pages makers, and it keeps me grounded. Noon is also when I usually feel best. My mornings can be unpredictable—headaches sometimes wipe me out. By noon, I’ve usually got enough energy to stand at my desk and work with my hands.

Some evenings, I catch a second wind, but that’s for other projects. Daily Pages don’t need that pressure. They’re just there to keep the wheels turning, so I never feel rusty or disconnected.

Your Turn: What’s your sweet spot in the day? Could that be your “daily” window?

What Counts as Enough

When I’m live, I usually wrap up my page in 25–30 minutes so it works for everyone watching. Off camera? Anything goes. Some days it’s a two-minute sticker drop. Other days it’s a whole experiment with scraps or stamping. Both count.

That’s the point: the win isn’t in how big or polished the page is. The win is that I showed up and touched the page.

Your Turn: What’s the smallest version of your creative habit? Could that be enough?

A Page I Love From a Flexible Season

One of my favorites came from leftover scraps. My Field Notes notebooks are a little narrower than letter-size paper, so I always end up with 1.5-inch strips. Gel prints, patterned scraps, stamped backgrounds—they pile up. One day I laid a bunch of strips across a spread, then added a photo and a sticker on top. Done. It was simple, it was scrappy, and it made me ridiculously happy.

And about “gaps”? I don’t stress them. If I skip a day, I flip to the next spread. Sometimes I glue blank pages back-to-back so I’m not wasting paper, but I don’t force it. The gaps are part of the rhythm.

Consistency Without Perfection

One of the biggest myths about creative practice is that consistency means perfection. It doesn’t. Consistency is about rhythm, not rigidity. Some seasons I make five pages a week. Some seasons I make one. Both are valid.

If we were sitting over coffee and you told me you felt guilty for not being consistent, I’d say this: you’re being too hard on yourself. We all have different capacities in different seasons. It’s not fair to compare your sick-week output to your 100%-healthy output. Both matter.

Your Turn: Where are you holding yourself to an unrealistic creative standard? What would it feel like to let it go?

Your Creative Journey

Flexibility isn’t a cheat—it’s the thing that makes a creative habit sustainable.

My shelves are lined with rows of notebooks, all the same size on the outside, but wildly different inside.

Some are crammed with collages, some are mostly lists, some have more blank space than anything else. Together they prove one thing: flexibility works.

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Here’s what we covered today:

• Daily means flexible, not rigid

• Small, doable pages count just as much as the big ones

• The gaps are part of your story

Action Step: Choose your version of “daily” this week and see what happens.

Hit reply and let me know even more about you and your (future?) creative habit!

Talk to you next week!

xoxo,

Kristin

P.S. If you’re enjoying these newsletters, please consider sharing this edition with a friend who might need a little creative boost today.