I have a shocking amount of empty notebooks lying around. I even dedicated a whole drawer to storing them. And even though that drawer exists - or maybe because of it - I keep buying more. Notebooks make me feel inspired and oddly grounded and utterly human.

Lately, I've been trying to use all of those notebooks. Creating a notebook ecosystem or whatever Gen Z calls it. I used to only have a journal, but I've expanded in recent months. I have a dream journal now, too, where I sometimes capture some of the very weird things my mind comes up with when I sleep. There's also one where I write one thing I'm grateful for every month. It'll last me for a while.

My favourite new thing I started, though, is my "letters I can't send" notebook. I've noticed that throughout my life, whenever I had to let go of a person, I always came up with all of these things I wanted to tell them. But I couldn't. Contacting them wasn't an option. And in truth, I didn't really ever need them to hear me (it's likely that them not hearing me is why things fell apart in the first place), I just needed to say what was on my mind. So I've started writing letters that nobody will ever read.

It's not about who reads them, though. It's about writing them. That's where I process things. That's where I can explore my thoughts and feelings. It's different from journaling, too. Addressing whoever I'm in the process of letting go makes it all a bit less self-analytical. While journaling, I often find myself trying to analyse my behaviours, peeling back layers of emotions to find the need at the center of it.

But writing letters? There is no analysis. It's almost kind of cathartic to write what I want to say to the person in that moment. It's a way of airing out my emotions without putting them under a microscope - because that's not what I need in that moment. And I've also likely already done it. But analysing a feeling doesn't make it go away. Feeling it does. Letting it live and breath in your chest, expand through your body, putting it into words, throwing it at the person it's directed at.

Notebooks are such wonderful tools to do literally anything. Plan a project, keep a memory, work through an emotion, create something pretty. I love notebooks and I will likely never be able to use all the ones I own. I love notebooks, I love the analogy of them, the way they age with you if you use them enough, the way they reflect your life and help you make the most of it.

The way they can keep your secrets, help you understand yourself and hold on to all the letters you can never send.