About three years ago, I bought a pink Moleskine notebook at my local Barnes & Noble on my way home from school. The next day, I was on a plane to Philadelphia for my very first college visits. I didn’t end up going to school there, but I do have about 15 pages of writing on my experience seeing the schools and the city in general. Every day since that fateful October 12th, I have kept an in-depth account of my life in a journal.Â
I think a lot of people are scared of keeping a journal out of a fear of being repetitive, running out of events to write about, or even feeling the need to lie to make themselves seem more interesting. These are all valid causes of distress. Honestly, these are feelings I have even encountered during my time writing in a journal. I refuse to fib and claim these obstacles are completely avoidable if you do decide to write in a journal, but I will argue that they are integral to actually reaping the benefits of the practice. When you finally work through the reason you need to appear more interesting in such a private space, you will have unlocked a new facet of your identity you did not have access to previously.Â
To speak to the issue of “running out of events to write about” I, once again, will agree this can be challenging initially. As soon as I was able to think about the world around me rather than exclusively my internal monologue, the shortage of things to write about dissipated. There is a common misconception with the practice of keeping a notebook, that it has to be entirely consisting of the writer’s exact account of their day and feelings. Joan Didion has famously disproven this in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook”. She speaks of her practice as more of an account of her reactions to the world around her, which I feel much more aligned with. One quote of hers specifically spoke to me, “The point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess.”
Didion is arguably the queen of keeping a journal, and largely popularized the concept of a commonplace notebook despite the practice being kept by authors such as Virginia Woolf, dating back to the 19th century. The commonplace notebook is defined as a “book of memorabilia” by Merriam Webster. To be less broad, commonplace notebooks are (by my definition) a small museum of your life. Gallery walls covered in snapshots of your days, both mundane and extraordinary alike. There is no reason to stifle your thoughts for the sake of being interesting, especially when the writing is exclusively for yourself. I find the best times to journal are when I am in a busy, borderline overwhelming, environment. Interpreting people’s lives around you is great writing material, and speaks to Didion’s idea of reacting to the world around you. Journaling is one of the most accessible things you can do to improve your mental health. A lot of brands like PaperRepublic and Louise Carmen have capitalized on the trend of leather folios and create high end notebooks, but a 50 cent spiral bound notebook will provide the exact same experience for you.Â
My final argument is the pure sentimental value of keeping a journal. I cannot tell you how many times I have tried to remember what happened on a specific day or where I was at a certain time, and have been able to flip back and find the exact information I was looking for in my writing. There have been times where I re-read entries and get to see exactly how much I have grown and matured. Of course there are also times where the entries make me quite sad, but no matter what, it is a good reminder of how time changes and heals a person. I think everyone deserves to flip through their life, especially their college years, and think “Wow, I am so glad I wrote this down!” Get a journal, set a 5 minute timer to write every day, it does not have to be a lot, and it does not have to feel like a burden, but I promise you it will pay off.