Thoughts on Journaling
I'm almost done with my first journal, I though I'd tell you. Even something that should be under lock and key feels like something to be shared; if it's anything at all like an achievement then I'm compelled to tell people, otherwise I'd feel like I had wasted my time. If a tree falls in a forest... you know. Better go and post it.
Ever since I got into the habit of it last August, all my recommendation algorithms got flooded with Content about journaling and notebooks and pens and replacing your phone with a notebook and how that would change my life for the better, somehow. It's a little dark and funny that "getting rid of your phone for your mental health" has become its own little grift ecosystem that traps you into looking at your phone. Still, even if I find the community of the thing I like to be distasteful, I do find satisfaction in doing it outside of that sphere. Which sounds stupid and obvious for something as personal as a journal, but you know how it is these days. I'm aware that by posting this, I'm basically doing the same thing as them. And yeah I have no counterpoint to that except I'm not making a single philippine centavo writing this.
A lot of journaling videos will advocate for a specific system of doing the journaling, and the Noelle Method goes like this: I fill a page with my thoughts and feelings for that day. That would be around 200 words, an achievable amount even on days where nothing happens, which is every day, or when I feel so burdened by depression that I don't feel like doing anything, which is every other week. I afford myself a little bit of Beautification by writing on a different pen with a different ink every day, but nothing more than that or it would be too much effort for a daily journal.
The key thing that let me be so uncharacteristically consistent was letting go of the idea that I was writing the journal to impress someone. Which, well, that's easy enough because this time I literally only have myself to write for. I never could do journals for school because I was too pressured to do well for that teacher I hated, and that goes for the journals the my therapists demanded I write. They were impressed, which is funny to think about for the psychiatrists, but I would hold back my thoughts and we wouldn't really go anywhere with the therapy.
I'm trying to apply my methodology for journaling with my blog, which is why this is an unedited mess. Other than that, though, it's not really working out because I have like four different drafts I've given up on because they were too awful to be read, but at least this is a start.
(Heh.. if you're curious about my fountain pens, which you are, uh. ask me about them)
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