My Journaling Journey
illustration by Yinne Smith
If you’re like me and tend to give up on things once you realize you’re not immediately good at them, then journaling is the hobby for you! (Former gifted kid things, am I right?) Anyway, there is absolutely no right or wrong way to go about journaling, and that’s one of the things I love about it.
I have been keeping a diary on and off since I was young, but I’ve only begun committing to it in the last two years. Before, I would buy journals impulsively with no plan for them in mind, leaving them to collect dust in my room. It’s been a difficult process to rewire my brain, but now I only buy journals if I know what I’m going to do with them ahead of time. For instance, a few weeks ago I spent $52 at Target on three journals, and before you come at me for spending so much, they were really nice, okay?
The point is, I have come a long way from hoarding journals and leaving them blank. Since I started taking this hobby more seriously, filling up pages has become a breeze. At the start of 2020, I began a bullet journal, thrilled to have something new I could be good at. Turns out, maintaining a bullet journal is a lot easier said than done. The first few spreads were fun, but it became too much work for me to consistently check in with my journal.
That’s one of the tips I have, to find your journaling style. While the idea of bullet journaling is fun to me--and it’s something I would even consider myself good at — it didn’t align with my goals. The whole reason I wanted to start bullet journaling in the first place was to get my life organized and have fun while doing it. Instead, it just stressed me out more when I couldn’t spend time working on it. I had to cut myself some slack because it was one of my first serious journals and I was still exploring what worked for me. I decided that before I wasted any more pages, I would turn it into my diary, which came with much less commitment.
After that decision, I only wrote in my diary whenever I felt like it. Over time, the entries became less and less structured and more frenzied (that’s the best way I can put it). At one point, I was journaling every day, even during my online classes. It was like I became obsessed with it. I was addicted to having an outlet where I could be my authentic self without any fear of judgment. I wrote down the stuff I was afraid of saying aloud, the things I worried my friends would look at me differently for. In a way, my journal became one of my closest friends.
From feelings I never thought I would process to panic attacks I never thought I would get through, my journal was there through it all. I wish I could say the pandemic is in the past, but it’s not, and we’re not in the clear from all of the long-term tolls it’s taken on our mental health either. In a time of isolation and fear, my journal helped me see that with time, things can change for the better. You see, without realizing it, I had been growing all along. Each journal entry was like a snapshot of all my thoughts and feelings at the time. Looking back, I’m proud to say I’m not the person I used to be anymore. I used to hate it when my brain reminded me of awful things, but by accident, I had found a loophole. Now when a rotten thought crawls into my brain like a worm into an apple, I use the opportunity to get it all out on paper.
I’ve never been a big fan of redoing anything. I either get it right the first time, or not at all. I can never rewatch shows or movies, or reread books. The same goes for revisiting memories, particularly the bad ones. Through journaling, however, this is exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been documenting the media I’ve been consuming, I’ve been writing about my past, and not only that, really thinking about it as well. It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, admitting that I’m not and will never be a perfect person, that I can’t run away from my inevitable flaws. That I’m not always going to get it right on the first try, life isn’t a one and done. I know that much from my first failed attempt at journaling. What matters is I tried again, and I kept trying.
I’ve always thought that if I didn’t take chances, then I couldn’t be wrong. If I didn’t say it aloud, I couldn’t hurt anyone. If I didn’t talk about it, life would just move on. But I’ve learned that none of this is true. How far do you get in life if you don’t take a risk? If you don’t say it aloud, aren’t you still hurting yourself? If no one knows how you feel, how will you ever heal?
Since starting this journal, I’ve learned more than I ever thought I would by doing things I never thought I could. There are still some pages I can’t bear to reread, but acknowledging that I’m not perfect is the first step in becoming a better person. Seeing how bitter and resentful I used to be and realizing how that was affecting me and those I loved, made me want to change. As someone who struggles with mental health, realizing that I am not a bad person because of my bad thoughts was life-changing. Now I know that there is no such thing as being perfect, just better.