This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Wash U chapter.
I’ve been journaling since the beginning of 2019 when I made my New Year’s resolutions that year. I thought I would quickly fall out of the habit, just like I almost always do with my New Year’s resolutions each year. But thankfully, I’ve been able to stick with it for this long, and now I journal every night! I don’t really do anything special except write about how my day went along with the emotions/thoughts I had, but here are a few reasons why I love to journal!
- Thought processing – I feel like if I didn’t journal, I would never really process my emotions and thoughts of things that occurred during the day or even remember what happened that day; journaling helps me to validate and bring awareness to my feelings by getting them down on paper
- Memories – sometimes it’s really fun for me to flip through my journal and look back on what I did / how I was feeling on a certain day; I’ll either go to a random page, choose a certain date (ex: my birthday last year), or even pick a page based on my Snapchat memories and read my entry from that day; it’s interesting how I can forget little details, even on what I feel like are my most memorable days / moments
- Practicing gratefulness – just kidding, I lied about not doing anything special; each day at the end of my entry, I always make sure to write down one thing that I’m grateful for; it’s cool to see that even on what seem like my worst days that I’m able to find something to be grateful for, no matter how small, and I think this small habit in journaling has helped me to be a more positive person overall
- Makes me realize that not every day is the same – this is a special reason for journaling that I found out about once COVID-19 hit; with the global pandemic, every day feels blurred together, and it seems like the same thing is happening over and over again; while that is true to a certain extent, journaling has helped me to understand that each day really is different and that I should appreciate every new day for what it is