Why I Journal

Journalling is often associated with introverts and stoics. It looks pretty boring. That’s probably why it doesn’t get hyped very much. It costs next to nothing. It doesn’t require any technology. It is an intrinsically no-hype process. But it deserves to be hyped.

I don’t think I can convey just how important journalling is to me. It’s one of the best things in my life.

I’m going to build shrines to my journals.

I’m going to build a journal themed Theme Park.

I’m going to write a feel good, glad hands musical called ‘Journalling Is The Greatest Thing In The World’. I will be the writer and impresario. Is there a more impressive job title in all the job-o-sphere than impresario. Imagine having that as your occupation on your passport.

How I Journal

My journalling tends to take the form of checking in with myself. If I’m feeling a bit off, then I consider why. Likewise, if I’m feeling good, I take some time to explore this. Sometimes I journal once a day, other times I’m in and out of the journal all day. I prefer it to be an in-day thing rather than a recapping end-of-day thing.

Most of all I like to examine the thoughts that quietly, destructively swirl around my mind. What is the point of them. What purpose do they serve. Are question marks required at the end of these sentences. For me journalling is the single most elegant way to achieve peace of mind over these swirling thoughts. My previous strategy was to ignore them or at least attempt to ignore them. And I would think that I was having success with that as I could no longer see them or barely see them. It was like covering up my eyes with my hands and thinking people couldn’t see me. Those swirling thoughts exist in some weird dimension that is a sort of quasi-subconsciousness.  Like unseen termites destroying the foundation of a house.

I often think of journalling as going hand in hand with meditation. Meditation helps you acknowledge the thoughts, and journalling helps you ruminate on them.

After examining the thoughts, I will examine the feelings associated with those thoughts. What physiological changes are happening to me when I think these things. What chemicals are released in my body and to what end. Do these chemical changes help me or hinder me.

The reason my mind feels full is not because there is a lot in it, there really isn’t, it’s because the stuff that is in it whirls round and round. When I journal about a whirling thought it will typically just cease to exist in my mind, freeing up space for other wonderful musings.

Journalling is the mental equivalent of tidying your desk. Or for those of us that are more messed up it’s like getting in one of those clean up services for hoarders.

Journalling makes circular thoughts linear. They come to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yes they have an end, with a full stop, not even an ellipsis…

Have you ever come up with a killer line (or worse a paragraph) for your novel or movie script but with no means to write it down? You keep repeating that line over and over in your head even while you’re doing some other activity like driving. Over and over in your head. Sometimes you lose it. You’re desperate to get it back. Sometimes it changes slightly, always to something inferior to the original. Oh shit and now another great line has come to you.  You’re juggling them both in your mind now and oh bloody hell, now an even better line has come to you. You repeat the lines over and over. You come up with some mnemonic to help you remember them, but that in itself is just one more thing to juggle in your mind. The moment you write the lines down you can let them go. You can move on to the next line.

Not-journalling is like trying to maintain the entire Magnum Opus of your life in your mind at all times.

Journalling is Therapy

Journalling is an opportunity to catch passing thoughts and feelings and to pay attention to the quiet and persistent hum at the back of your mind.

It’s an opportunity to assign meaning to those thoughts and feelings.

Journalling gives you a certain 3rd party perspective on yourself. You aren’t simply being yourself, you are looking at yourself. If you don’t ask ‘how am I feeling’, and ‘why am I feeling like this’, you won’t answer the question. You will simply be. And when you simply be, you equate yourself with your feelings. You are depressed or anxious, rather than you feel depressed or anxious. You are an anxious person. It seems far healthier to me to first notice that you are feeling anxious, and secondly to ask why that might be.

I always think a good journal should make you cringe at the thought of other people reading it. You’re examining every last drop of petty jealousy that in real life you consider yourself to be above. And your vanity and your fears and inadequacies.

It’s an opportunity to drop the façade we present to the outside world. That façade doesn’t make you fake or inauthentic, it’s entirely necessary to operate in the world. However, you do need some time where you are crushingly honest with yourself about your fears and weaknesses that you mask in the outside world.

I imagine it’s a bit like therapy, but a whole lot cheaper. One of the benefits of therapy is simply that you are speaking with a stranger. It grants you a sense of anonymity which can allow you to be more open.

There’s no-one to judge you in a journal.

If you don’t know how to start journalling, you might simply start by answering the question ‘how do I feel’ each day in your journal. And overtime you’ll develop the sense to really understand how it is you feel. Some stuff is too vague or too broad or to ‘you’ to notice at first. Sometimes there is that thing that is just behind my mind and off to the left somewhere that is hard to notice. What is that? A combination of meditation and journalling can help you learn to see these feelings.