Remember back in the good ol’ days when you came home from school, got out your glitter gel pens and wrote in your diary? You probably dismissed the idea of keeping a diary once you entered middle school or high school, but for the few who still write in a diary (or journal, as we mature folk like to call it) the benefits have been pretty great. A journal is the one place where you can say whatever you want and no one is there to judge.
Mainly out of pure laziness, I took a break from writing in journals during high school. At the beginning of my freshman year here at Cal Poly, while drifting around the first floor of Barnes and Noble in a territory I normally didn’t browse in, I was surprised to find shelves full of beautiful journals. Suddenly, I had this romantic picture in my head of me sitting on a bench, drinking my usual chai tea latte and writing in a journal. I decided to purchase one and found it to be just how I imagined.
You might be wondering what you would even write in a journal. Often times, I feel like I have nothing to write about, but when I get out my journal and a pen, it just starts writing itself. It may sound cheesy, but you would be surprised to find out all you have to say once you put a pen to a paper. Since this might seem like a daunting task, I have put together a step-by-step guide on how to keep a journal.
1) Buy a journal. I suggest going to Barnes and Noble, because they have leather-bound ones, and you can tell people you found it in a quaint village bookstore during your adventures abroad. “It’s Italian leather.”
2) Splurge on some cool pens. Go get those glitter gel pens. You go girl.
3) Find a comfy spot and just start writing. Write what you had for breakfast, the way rainy days make you feel, or your plan to take over the world. It’s your journal so you could plan out your wedding with Ryan Gosling and no one would have to know.
4) I suggest keeping it a secret. Don’t blab about it to your friends or whip it out at the next party. Make it the one thing that is only yours.
Keep the dream of diaries alive, ladies. Therapists are expensive.