Some Thoughts on Journaling

Journaling is for everybody. Unless you are a teenage girl, in which case you call it "writing in your diary."

I'm kidding! Diary, journal, whatever you want to call it doesn't matter. No matter who you are, putting your thoughts down on paper helps to clarify your thinking and get to know yourself better. It's also valuable for preserving your personal story. It's shocking how much of our own lives we forget.

I was re-reading one of my old journals recently, and noticed something: almost everything I had written down that day years ago was something I was feeling or thinking, and I had written next to nothing about what I was actually doing. I realized that my style of journaling is very internally focused; if anyone, including myself, had wanted to know the external details of my life by reading that journal, they wouldn't get much out of it. If, however, they wanted to know the landscape of my inner world, they would get all of that and then some. I resolved to be a little bit more descriptive of my external world.

I wonder if I'm wasting my life by smoking too much weed. I feel like there's two voices inside me arguing, and I don't know which one to listen to. I want this person to be a part of my life but I have no idea if they feel the same way.

. . .continues for 6 paragraphs. . .

Oh, and by the way, right now I'm in Spain watching the sun set.

Are you more inclined to describe where you are and what you're doing? Or are you more inclined to talk about your inner journey? There's no wrong answer. For me, it's definitely the latter. But I think it's worth asking ourselves the question, so that we don't forget to give some love to the other side.

Your future self, looking back through your journals, will want to know where you were and what you did. They will also want to know how you felt about it. Don't forget to describe both.