Author Anaïs Nin once wrote in her diary: “It was while writing a Diary that I discovered how to capture the living moments. Keeping a Diary all my life helped me to discover some basic elements essential to the vitality of writing. When I speak of the relationship between my diary and writing I do not intend to generalize as to the value of keeping a diary, or to advise anyone to do so, but merely to extract from this habit certain discoveries which can be easily transposed to other kinds of writing.”
Whether you consider yourself a writer or not, keeping a journal should be an essential way to unleash your thoughts from a stressful day or from possibly the best day of your life. It is a habit, like any other, though at times work and procrastination get in the way of being able to keep up with daily entries. Plenty of celebrated writers, such as Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and the most famous author of a diary, Anne Frank, have all used journaling as a platform to express their thoughts on life, their day-to-day feelings on specific or general topics, and as a medium to express whatever comes to their minds. Here are some suggestions on how anyone and everyone can benefit from keeping a journal at hand:
1. You get to vent in any way you want, because it is strictly your work, and there is no one to criticize your personal opinions.
Unless you decide to publish your entries online, what you write is yours, and yours only. Your opinion doesn’t have to change for anyone, and you can even add badly-drawn doodles you wouldn’t want your artistic friends to see.
2. It expands your creativity, focus, and helps you organize your way of writing
As I stumbled upon a listicle entitled 100 Benefits of Journaling, a few of the mentioned topics were stress reduction, healing, getting to know yourself and your truth better, personal growth, among other headlines. Another article by the Huffington Post, as well, adds more facts on how it is good for you. Since the benefits could go on for more and more points, I will leave the links so you can explore more on the wonders of writing down rants, anecdotes from your day, and other miscellaneous things down on a beautifully chaotic notebook (or tablet if you’re more inclined toward the tech world).
3. You can look back at great (and not-so-great times) you had that you want to remember in detail
This point is pretty self-explanatory. Who doesn’t want to remember intense college nights, a bad break-up, or a day where something so miniscule happened that brings back nostalgia? Not only does keeping a journal help you remember the good times, but at times it’s important to look back at your journey and realize your personal growth over time.
4. You might become famous and the world can read about the chaos you’ve experienced and the power it brought to you.
Let’s be serious: there’s a 50/50 chance something like this could happen.Brain Pickings published an excellent article entitled Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary, and just the thought that your daily rambles could one day become celebrated and inspiring is exhilarating enough to make you pick up a pen and write away, but maybe simply passing down your journals to your grandchildren would be enough to convince them that you were once cool.