You Do Not Have to Keep the Streak Alive

Half-finished pages, missed days, and knowing how to come back

Last week, I sat down with a couple of new sticker books and some double-colored highlighters that I picked up recently. One of the sticker books is a big book of Queer Stickers that I found at Odd Nodd in Lansing when we were walking around the Old Town neighborhood. It has dozens of pages of stickers with all different themes, so I picked out a few from different sections and used them to start some spreads in my notebook.

The highlighters came from the same trip, and they’re so fun. They literally have two different colors in the same highlighter. I love my regular Mildliners, so of course I needed to try these out too. I picked up the warm collection, and now I’ve got my eye out for the cool collection as well.

I made a few half-finished pages on purpose. I wasn’t going into my crafty session trying to make finished pages. I wanted to play around with some new supplies, and whenever I got to a roadblock, I moved on to the next page and started that one.

Eventually, the plan is to go back and add photos, journaling, more art, or whatever else I feel like adding. For now, I put everything away and put my notebook back in the yellow pouch. I know that I’ll come back to those pages whenever I’m feeling like it.

And, tbh—if I never get back to them and they remain half finished, that’s part of the story too. Sometimes these small notebook pages are just for play. It doesn’t really matter what the page looks like in the end. The goal is never to create perfect pages or make a perfect notebook—like we’ve talked about, that’s not a real thing.

I’ve never wanted Daily Pages—or any of my small notebooks—to be about keeping a streak alive. It was never meant to be a 365-day project. In fact, it wasn’t until Covid that I started making Daily Pages every weekday at the same time. Before that, I mostly used the project to warm myself up for making bigger pages.

Even when I was showing up at noon every weekday, I never worried about “making up” the pages I missed. If I was sick for a day or went away for a week, those pages simply didn’t happen.

I didn’t need to explain why I missed them either. Missing days is part of life. It doesn’t require an excuse or a justification. That’s just life.

Sometimes I was sad or annoyed when I didn’t get to create, especially when I wasn’t feeling well and it was my own body keeping me away from my desk. But a lot of the days I missed Daily Pages were days when I was out doing something fun that I could scrapbook later.

You get to go out and live the life that you’re going to document.

The streak ended almost as soon as it began. I was never interested in making pages every single day indefinitely. But the practice is still alive and well, even after several months off, having a baby, and rearranging my entire life.

For me, consistency is the ability to start and stop without a ton of friction. You don’t have to think about how you’re going to get started. You don’t have to make a million decisions about what you’re going to do, and you don’t have to turn finishing up into a whole production.

It doesn’t have to be something you do every day, every week, or even every month. It can be something you get into when you have the time. Having a consistent way in and out is what makes that possible.

Sometimes I take a day off. Sometimes I take a week off. Sometimes I take a sick day. Sometimes my pages suck.

Sometimes I finish a page in five minutes and I’m done. Sometimes I spend 45 or 50 minutes on a page and don’t even notice how long I’ve been creating.

I also have a bunch of things that help with the decision-making when I’m unsure where to start. I’ve got Currently on Mondays and Thursday3 on Thursdays. There’s Technique or Tool Tuesday, when the entire goal can be trying something new or practicing with a specific supply. There’s Weather or Washi Wednesday because, as a Midwesterner, I’m always talking about the weather anyway. Yes, the weather can be boring and repetitive, but it’s still a big part of my day-to-day life—especially with my headaches.

Sometimes returning looks like making a Currently List. Sometimes it’s one page in a tiny notebook. I might take a quick class or watch a create-along video so somebody else can make most of the big decisions and I can get my hands used to making again.

Creating alongside other people is another one of my favorite ways back.

I started The Awesome Ladies Project because I wanted to create with friends. When I was in college, I used to go to my local scrapbook store on Saturday nights. We would get there around five or six, order takeout, and scrapbook and talk until midnight.

After the 2009 recession, all my local scrapbook stores closed. There was no more scrapbooking with friends in person each week. So I started scrapbooking at home on Friday nights, chatting on Instagram, and using the hashtag #awesomeladiesproject.

Eventually, after a few years of talking on Instagram, I created my own online community. All the friends I had made came over to the ALP. Now it’s a laid-back place with a chronological feed where you can share what you’re making, find creative friends, and have people there to cheer you on.

Your return doesn’t have to look like mine. Maybe you downloaded the Currently List this month but haven’t filled it out yet. Maybe you made one page and then disappeared for two weeks. Maybe you’ve read every email in this series and haven’t made anything.

That’s okay.

There’s no minimum number of pages you need to make per week, month, or year. There isn’t some magical threshold of pages that you cross and suddenly you’re a creative person. There are going to be times in our lives when our creativity is limited. You can be okay with that.

If you genuinely want to participate more, you can ask yourself what got in the way. Have the past few weeks been especially chaotic—mentally, physically, or emotionally? Is there something you could tweak to make your supplies easier to reach? A lack of creativity never exists in a vacuum. There’s always stuff going on that makes it harder to create. If you can identify what’s up—you’re going to have a much easier time getting back to the page.

You can also be completely cool with making one page every few weeks. There’s no right or wrong answer, especially these days when life is so chaotic.

The next big project I’m looking forward to returning to is December Daily. I’ve been doing it since those days at my local scrapbook store, when I read about it in one of the magazines and decided to give it a go.

This year, I’m taking a big swing and attempting a 10×8 album. Compared to my tiny notebooks, this thing is huge. My biggest reason for choosing the larger album is that I want as many full-page photos of Charlotte as possible.

In past years, I’ve felt like I didn’t do enough in December to justify big photos. Lots of work plus early sunsets does not create ideal photo conditions. But all the photos of the baby are worth printing full page, and I’m so excited for her first Christmas.

I might finish the whole album in December. I might not. Either way, it’s a project I’m really looking forward to.

For right now, I’m sticking with the supplies I already have on hand. There are stickers and art prints in my little pink binder. I’ve got my Flow book, more sticker books, and an ephemera pack in my tote bag. I have more than enough stuff to make some great pages without going searching for anything else.

That’s my next return. Not an entire October routine or a promise that I’m going to show up a certain number of times. Just the next thing I want to make.

Your Turn: What about you? If you’re returning to your creative practice, what could that return look like? If you’re already making things, what is the very next thing you want to do?

You can leave a comment below and tell me. It can be as small as opening your notebook, printing one photo, finishing something you started, or putting down the first sticker on a brand-new page.

You don’t have to keep the streak alive. You just have to show up and put something down on the page.