The terror of daily journals - and why it’s good for your writing
Are you like me and every few months you try and start writing a daily journal, and you get this surge of motivation, and write for a week straight and then one day you don’t and then you never do again? Yeah? Well, keep reading.
Ungh, why does the aesthetic have to be so *chef’s kiss* though? Photo by @esteejanssens from Unsplash.
“Some may say [journal keeping] is a great deal of trouble. But we should not call anything trouble which brings to pass good. I consider that portion of my life which has been spent in keeping journals and writing history to have been very profitably spent. If there was no other motive in view [except] to have the privilege of reading over our journals and for our children to read, it would pay for the time spent in writing it.”
I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other week that went something like this:
Me: I really want to get back into daily gratitude journaling! I feel like it’s a good thing for me, but I can never stick to it.
Friend: If you can’t stick to it, why do you keep trying to do it?
Me: Well…
Friend: There’s nothing wrong with dropping something if it’s not working for you! Find what works for you and stick with it.
And, yeah, that really resonated with me. Why do I keep trying to write gratitude journals if it does nothing for me? For the past few years, I’ve vacillated between bullet journals, gratitude journals, morning pages, and feeling like shit for not doing any of them.
I hoard journals. For what? I don’t know. Sometimes I use them to plot books. Sometimes I use them to mark down goals or write notes for work. Other times, I just like how they look. I like the potential they hold.
But recently I read A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, and while I have mixed feelings about the book itself, part of it was written from the perspective of a teenage girl in Japan, writing in her journal.
The way this character wrote was reminiscent of the way I kept my diary throughout middle school and high school. And since those were particularly dark times for me, it helped me to write to a future someone. Someone who may understand the situation I was going through better than I could. Someone who would find my journal and sympathize. Who could explain why I had to feel the way I did, and how they, this future anonymous thing, could be my only confidant.
So, recently, I started journaling like this again. I set a timer for 10 minutes and write to this future someone, and the words come out. I spill memories onto the page that I haven’t thought about in years. A teacher’s classroom from high school and how it felt to sit there. A memory of someone else’s remembering. And I look forward to it. Even if I do it at different times every day, it’s always a joy to open my notebook and write my 10-minute stream of consciousness letter to this faraway person who may never exist, but who may.
It differs slightly from morning pages in that there isn’t a three-page minimum. And I don’t write it with the intention that it’s only for me. Not that I write it to read it to anyone. Just that, there’s potential that someone besides me may read it one day.
And, in a lot of ways, this has been very useful for my writing. It helps me think of interesting ideas. It helps me parse out the ever-flowing thoughts in my brain that wouldn’t make it to paper otherwise. And it forces me to think of all the things in my life I want to share.
This weekly blog is a journal as well, and it’s also a journal that is screamed into the void of existence. Why write a journal for the world when you could write one equally as private in a notebook on a sheet of paper stained with slick ink?
Anyway — I’m curious about the journaling methods that have worked for you? Do you prefer the method of the first pretty picture (which is way too artsy for me and too much effort IMO). Or do you prefer gratitude journaling? Prompted journals? Or does something else stimulate your creative muscles? Lemme know in the comments!
As always, be sure to head over to the Main Street Rag’s website to preorder my book Just Us. If you want a free, signed copy of Just Us, head over to my Patreon and subscribe at $7/month tier or higher, where you’ll receive a ton of cool content from yours truly.
Be sure to subscribe to this blog as well! I recently updated the free e-book you’ll receive to a short story. If you already subscribe, fret not, you’ll receive a copy in your email soon. :)
