Dear diary - mood : apathetic...

Tip #20: Journal - write it out

This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to mid-November 2024, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.

Tip #20 - Journal - write it out

I remember the first time I was introduced to journaling.

I was at a church event for the younger girls. I was 8, it was 1995/1996. These things happened weekly where we’d go to one of the adult’s houses for some type of enriching activity and a treat.

This particular one was notebook decoration and those notebooks were journals. It was around the time that the Dear America books were popular among girls of the American Girl type shit (me).

I was already super observational, I loved people watching and when it was explained to us how important and valuable writing out your history was in a religious type of way I thought I could do that. So I did.

I was hooked.

I loved cutting things out of magazines and gluing it to the front of the spiral bound notebook. Picking things out that I wanted to represent the promises of my internal thoughts and depth of soul from the outside.

We did this a lot in the 90’s and early 2000’s, but it seems like it’s become somewhat of a lost thing now at least in the ways “do you have spare magazines I can use for stuff” was a normal question back then for me to ask or hear and to say, where now if you asked that not many people would have a stack of old magazines that hadn’t been recycled yet.

Anyway, we collaged the front with things that represented us, that we found inspiring, that we wanted to be, and then wrote about our day and our feelings. I thought I was more internal and expansive in my writing, but rereading this journal over again recently it looks like I was just relaying a series of events.

For years I straight documented.

Sometimes I showed some attitude and some personality but not as much as I expected. Even in these pages I think I was hyper aware of the expectations for who I was supposed to be, at least in the character traits of who I was supposed to be, and that it meant I had to edit part of myself in a way. Seems like even then I felt I couldn’t put my guts on the page, but I could detail in what order we went to my brothers basketball practice, did chores, had a barbecue, and now I’m too tired to write more.

It’s interesting to review.

The amount of which I held to myself even then and while still wanting to document relentlessly what we were doing with our time - it’s interesting to look at from the 36 year point of view.

As I’ve grown I haven’t been as much of a journaler as I used to be, but that’s probably ok. There was a point in time where I was bringing it in the car and on errands, keeping clips of things we went to and candy wrappers and documenting time just to pass time, because I needed to survive time, and not think about it too much and definitely not feel it too much.

In college I was sporadic at best. In early marriage I was also pretty random. All told I have like 2 full bins of notebooks from my childhood and youth and from my life since becoming a parent that are mostly full.

Journaling and writing by hand has always been something that’s a positive exercise to me. I love stationary and pens and ink and was part of the culture that massively enjoyed gel pens.

Where writing notes and folding them up to pass to friends, taking notes in class by hand with different colors was the thing you did, exactly like they did in pen15, and in elementary school where we had this slick pencil thing you could put a quarter into and get a pencil with some wild design, and then we traded them and I was all about it.

The fresh untouched erasers with the neon ones that had some type of a glow to them I still remember so clearly.

Writing, with my head on the desk at school and at home, watching the ink flow from the rollerball to the paper, letting my hand translate for my brain in a way my voice had never been about to do as smoothly, is some type of out of body transcendence stuff I still marvel at.

The subtle ache from writing out everything that happened that day was the bath my brain often needed to know there was another one coming afterwards.

I used to keep a journal with my best friend too and even though we lived across the street from each other. and for a time shared a pair of walkie talkies we used when we weren’t literally together, and then we would keep a notebook and write in it a week or a few days at a time and then swap.

Writing things out has always been a Thing for me.

Once a man sent me a video of his particular choice in notebooks and pens and of him writing something with that pen on that paper. That was pretty damn cool.

Anyway – there’s studies about how it’s beneficial to write things by hand but I’m not going to be so particular about the method. It seems to matter less to me these days, the how of it, especially since I can type faster than I can write by hand.

Getting things out of my brain is the goal.

Not so that stuff can then be forgotten or overlooked or avoided or gone, but in the getting out process, that trip from my brain down my arm out through my fingers on the keyboard or in moving the pen, some magic seems to happen in which I am processing.

That content and those thoughts, they’re getting polished or put in order. It’s similar to why I like to walk at night because it feels like the thoughts trail out behind me instead of being stuck in the confines of my brain.

Writing it out, whatever it is you need to write about, without tons of thought or organization or detail helps me.

I prefer a train of thought thing (you may have noticed). While I haven’t been able to make morning pages a la the artist’s way stick as a practice, I do appreciate the command in there to just let your brain dictate, without judgement.

It’s always most helpful for me to write draft 1 of everything as a word brain barf that I can go back to later and turn into something more sensible.

This advice to journal is pretty simple. This thing that helped is likely something you already know and maybe already do but they’re all simple things that helped. These are reminders to use what helped before to help again, and to pull from those basics like do your journaling and write out what you think and practice articulating how you feel and see if it gives you more clarity.

Reread your old journals to see how far you’ve gotten from then, to see what you’ve improved on or what else needs to be done in the meanwhile.

Write it out to then look at with honesty.

Write it out to envision where you want to go.

Write out what you’re worried about and why you want to overcome that stuff and get to the life you wanna have.

It’s helpful.

Makes me feel more grounded in myself – the way the tree pose helps me feel more steady and solid from the inside of myself from the feet up, when I journal and write I feel more clear from my brain to my arms and out to the rest of me. 

Go grab a notebook and write some stuff down.

How was your week?

What are you worried about?

What do you need to feel secure? Do you have it yet?

How are you feeling about what you’ve gotten done in the last 6 months?

Where do you want to be mentally, physically, emotionally, in your work, in your relationships 6 months from now? Are you doing things to get to that place?

What is something you love about your life right now?

There’s so many journal prompts out there. I tend to just dive in a blab like Tina does at the start of this post. Either way, and whatever you do with your journals, whatever form they take, writing it out can really really help.

Worth a try, right?

xx-Marian

(would be a rad place to be sponsored by a stationary co. wouldn’t it lol maybe next time)