How and Why to Keep a Journal
I’ve kept a diary since about fifth grade. I’m pretty sure my first diary was inspired by the Dork Diaries series, and the pages were covered in cartoons of things that happened to me in my day or things that I imagined happening. I haven’t opened that notebook in probably seven or eight years, and I’m slightly terrified to. But I kept writing in diaries, through middle and high school and my freshman year of college. I don’t usually go back and read anything I’ve written that’s over a year old, simply out of embarrassment. I think my self-esteem would take a massive blow if I went back and read the pages and pages I spent analyzing my compatibility with my eighth-grade crush. But the few times I do go back, especially through the diary I kept in high school, I’m often pleasantly surprised. The journal is a catalog of milestones in my life: my first time driving a car, the deaths of my grandparents, my play that my high school produced, my college decision, graduation, and my first scary month of living at college 800 miles from home. But it’s also a catalog of the small moments that took up my time and my thoughts. Dang, I used to be pretty obsessed with horses and what other people thought about me and boys who really weren’t all that.
But around November 2024, fall of my sophomore year, my journaling got super inconsistent. The end of the day would come, and I would rather curl up in bed with a book than frantically scribble out my thoughts about my day. For a while, my entries would start something like “Sorry I haven’t written in a while, but here’s a bullet-point list of everything that happened this month…” (Yes, I apologize to myself a lot in my diary.) I knew that on down the road, I would wish I had a better record of my younger self, especially my college self. I also was struggling creatively and decided to give Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way a try. This isn’t going to turn into an advertisement for that book, but I’ll explain how it works.
Basically, The Artist’s Way is a famous “creative workbook” of sorts that hinges on two creative habits: taking a weekly “artist’s date” and filling up three pages in a journal every morning. I committed to two pages, since my handwriting is tiny, my journal pages are about 8.5x11”, and I found that two pages took me about half an hour, which was the perfect amount of time. For the last three months, I’ve been waking up 30 minutes early every morning, and before I eat breakfast or have any coherent thoughts, I sit at my desk and write for a blurry half hour.
The rules: Write anything that comes to mind. Completely stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes I just write “Ummmmmmmm, I don’t have anymore thoughts,” and then more thoughts will come. Sometimes I write song lyrics if they’re stuck in my head, or if I’m lazy and need to fill up the rest of a page. Usually I just recall what happened the day before or lay out my thoughts for the day ahead. Usually something comes up about breakfast, because I start to get hungry about halfway through. And the next rule: don’t look back. After the pages are filled, flip the page, put the notebook away. The next morning, don’t look back, start on a clean page. Don’t look back at anything you’ve written within a month. And never show the pages to anyone.
This is Patrick Brontë’s mess of desk, not mine (:
It might seem pointless or at least unconventional, but after 13 weeks of journaling in the mornings, I can honestly say that my head feels clearer, my pen a little freer. The point is to become unafraid of making mistakes, which if you’re a perfectionist like me, can be life-saving medicine. Even if you have no interest in writing, journaling can be such a beneficial practice, especially this stream-of-consciousness kind of journaling. If anything, I certainly feel less overwhelmed by my own thoughts. And eventually I’ll have a record of everything that was going through my head on a morning as a 19-year-old: random dreams I had the night before, worries about the future, what I want for breakfast. Most of it is trivial. All of it is sloppy. But sometimes there’s something I’ll write that I’ll learn something from or will get at something real. It’s not all so pointless.
“... I have just re-read my year’s diary and am much struck by the rapid haphazard gallop at which it swings along, sometimes indeed jerking almost intolerably over the cobbles.”
The other journal-type thing I’ve been doing since January 1 is keeping a “One Line a Day” book. Pretty self-explanatory, but just before going to sleep, I write one line to sum up my day. These I can think about and can flip back to. And it means I don’t have to comb through pages and pages of incoherent morning thoughts to see some kind of shape to my life. Even though I’ve only been doing this for a couple of months, it’s been fun to look back at some of the entries.
Jan 21- “Tried and failed to rescue a dog today, and I really hope the little guy didn’t freeze out in the cold.”
Feb 8- “Today I ate quite possibly the best bagel sandwich I have ever had.”
Feb 20- “Florida man trapped in an unlocked closet for two hours.” (that was a writing prompt for a class)
In the last few months especially, I’ve found journaling to be a helpful and life-giving practice, not so much for my writing as for my own sanity. And if it’s good enough for Virginia Woolf, then it’s good enough for me. I know habits are hard to start and sometimes even harder to keep, but I’d encourage you to give this one a try. I think the term “journaling” implies some kind of deep contemplation or reflection, but it’s more freeing to be completely authentic. Write about the thing your friend said to you at lunch or the many tasks on your to-do list or the song that’s stuck in your head. And then something unexpected will appear on the page, and this whole manic journaling thing won’t seem so pointless.