I Started Keeping a Journal, and I Think You Should Too

The idea of keeping a diary never appealed much to me. Sitting down every day to studiously record how my day went is something that truly bored me to death– or turned me into a pathological liar (my first grade school journal is filled with epic tales of my life that never happened, all to make my writing more entertaining for my teacher). Either way, I always found myself intimidated and eventually scared away from the pressure of it all. Why write something down if it wasn’t all that interesting, or serious enough for someone to want to read? And so, most of my thoughts and ideas have been lost to the comings and goings of my mind. But recently, I started keeping a new kind of journal, something less demanding than a diary, where I really let my brain be free. 

My newfound relationship with my little brown journal made me curious about all the people who ever kept journals. You probably already guessed, but journaling isn’t anything new, it’s been in practice for thousands of years, by some of the greatest minds to walk the earth. One of the earliest forms of journaling was by Ma Dubo, nearly 2,000 years ago, as he trekked across China from Luoyang to Mount Tai, writing down who and what he saw. Years and miles away, in 167 AD the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote down his thoughts on Stoic philosophy, and how he could apply it to his daily life, we know it now as Meditations. Journaling wasn’t limited to men either, and has been utilized by women throughout history as a means of expression, usually in societies where autonomy was limited. Take Fujiwara no Michitsuna no Haha for example, also known as Michitsuna’s mother, married to a Japanese statesman during the Heian period in Japan, she recorded her experiences as a woman of the court alongside her private sentiments in the Kagerou Nikki. Or famously, Anne Frank, who recorded her life in hiding during the Holocaust, as well as her Book of Beautiful Sentences, in which she recorded texts and poems which she was inspired by. Ultimately keeping a journal has been practiced by a diverse array of people for a myriad of reasons. 

And so, you probably saw this coming, I think you should keep one too. Don’t worry, no one’s expecting complete masterful work like that of Leonardo Da Vinci, but if you’d like to try I won’t stop you. But moreso, think of it as a way to organize your thoughts–the creative, emotional, and mundane, just like the previously listed writers did. But if the idea of traditionally writing in a journal is unappealing to you, thankfully today there are alternatives. Consider Substack, a new popular form of social media in which you can publish your own writing (or videos and podcasts, but mainly writing), to a dedicated group of readers. Most of the content on Substack is subscriber based, but you can find a good deal of writers on there for free, simply writing about what they’re passionate about. This is a good alternative for those of you who’d like an audience with your journal entries or just a platform to finally publish your writing in a more committed space, I know I have a few drafts I keep meaning to publish on there. But if you’re not much of a writer, and have difficulty conveying your ideas with a pen, try a video diary. Essentially, it’d be the same as keeping a journal just in video form, but you have the ability to capture your ideas as soon as they happen, not just when you have the time to write. This would be a great way to practice video-editing if you’re into that too. 

It doesn’t really matter how you get those ideas out of your head, as long as you set them down, so you can come back to them later. Keeping a journal has been a way for me to integrate my creative side, which is usually sidelined throughout the school-year, in my day to day life. Not only does journaling let you express your creative side, it helps your brain process things, and helps what you did during the day, get stored in the brain for your long term memory

I do sometimes sit down after a long day and seriously write down how I feel, but those entries are few and far between, scattered throughout an amalgamation of article ideas, sketches, or notes from lectures, and it’s exactly what works for me. It’s a collection of all the scattered thoughts I have throughout the day, saw a cute crow? Write that down. Need to remember some things for that quiz? Write that down too. Notes from music class mixed in with inked sketches of the crow from earlier that morning. And while my journal entries are no longer made to impress anyone but me, I do hope that 2,000 years from now, the aliens who do find my journal won’t think I’m too boring.

• #self care
• creative
• journaing