Journaling

[TW…NTL]

Does anyone else like to journal? I got serious about it in the middle of June 2022 and made a commitment to write daily entries for one year. It stuck! Before the first year of journaling ended. I loaded up on pretty notebooks and fun pens.

Currently, I write something each night before I meditate and go to sleep. It’s all very freeform - no set length or topic - and I’m loving it! Sometimes, I’m inspired to write about social or political topics. During poetry month, I wrote a haiku everyday. It’s a great place to vent, to let go of worries, to affirm myself, etc.

How do you approach journaling? Has it been a positive in your life, too?

[RedRosa]

I've been keeping a journal since September 1968 (I was 14.)

I write every morning, and I have a pocket notebook that I carry with me that I write in when I'm at my local café.

For my morning journal I write down whatever dream fragment I can remember. I got the idea from Jack Kerouac's Book of Dreams originally, and then years later I read Andre Breton's Communicating Vessels where he records 12 dreams and then analyzes them. The appendix is his correspondence with Freud about the latter's The Interpretation of Dreams.

Dreams are not all that I read about. I collect ideas for poems, work drafts of essays, editorialize about current events, and also make therapeutic entries about my emotional life.

Writing is habit for me, and I need mu daily journal fix.

[moonbynight]

I go through phases. I'll journal for years, and then not-journal for years. Right now I'm in a not-journaling phase.

I started out writing in notebooks in my early teens,then stopped after a while. Then got into online journaling when that became a thing around 2000, and did that for a long time. I also used to journal about bi/relationship-related stuff on the old shys site (I had the foresight to copy those entries elsewhere, so they aren't lost).

At some point, I switched largely to private journaling in a google doc - I now have three separate ones. Two ordinary ones because the first got up to about 50 pages and was taking too long to load, and one that I wrote about pandemic stuff.

I started out with "Dear diary" type entries. With online journaling it was more episodic, and not necessarily as honest since there was an audience. The google docs are more sort of an ongoing stream of consciousness narrative.

I think it's helpful. At the very least, for remembering things. But also in helping me recognize patterns of behavior in myself and others.

[TW…NTL]

I've been keeping a journal since September 1968 (I was 14.)

That’s amazing! I very much admire the longevity and variety of your journaling practice!

[TW…NTL]

I think it's helpful. At the very least, for remembering things. But also in helping me recognize patterns of behavior in myself and others.

It sounds like you’re a long-time writer, too, and using it as a tool to analyze behavior is such a fantastic idea. I’m glad you didn’t lose your entries from the old site.

[StarDust]

I don't journal as much as I'd like too. I usually do it when I'm feeling overwhelmed and need to let it out. I've been focusing a lot on writing stories, so I try to write everyday, but I heard journaling helps with storytelling. It's something I need to remember to do.