Let me clarify. Hopefully, that title didn’t scare you away. I love to talk about myself TO myself. A.k.a I like to journal about everything in my head and everything in my life. I despise talking about myself to other people. Even if people ask me a question about myself, I still feel incredibly guilty for not asking them as good of questions as they did about me. Anyway, let me get to the point.
Journaling. Boy, do I love a good journal session. Maybe that’s why I write a lot of these opinion articles. It is so freeing to see your thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc., on paper and synthesized into sentences that actually make sense. I can look back and see where I may have gone wrong, and see where I can pat myself on the back. One of my favorite pastimes (and things to do when I have more important things to do) is looking back at old entries. I have years upon years of entries spread across multiple journals, all of them close to being filled. They’re my words and thoughts for me and me only. No one else.
They aren’t always juicy dramas that I can relive; they’re usually just what (or who) made me frustrated that day and why. Holy cannoli, was I as dumb as a brick? The things I said. The things I found important in those days. I reread names that send literal shivers down my spine. Chills, man. Literal chills. Sometimes it’s about what homework I got done that day, since that seems to be a thing I do often. Sometimes, past me had forgotten to cross her t’s and dot my i’s, so present me does it for her. Sometimes they’re pages long. Sometimes they’re only a sentence. Sometimes they start in print and slowly transition to cursive when I start getting sloppy. If you ever see me in class writing notes in cursive, that’s why.
I don’t have much of a system to it, besides writing the date at the top. I don’t start with “Dear Diary” or any of that nonsense. I just write. They span across all assortments of notebooks and journals—my least favorite being the one notebook that isn’t lined on both sides. Who does that? Who hurt you? I either straight-up waste paper or write super big so I get done with that side of the paper faster. The best journals are the spiral-bound ones, which don’t have a binding to get in the way of your hand.
If I need to rant and my hand won’t write fast enough, I vlog. I have probably hours of videos of me talking about my day, spacing out, forgetting what I was going to say, and then abruptly changing the subject when I remembered something significant. I always try to start the video with the date, how old I am, and where I’m at (which is usually in bed). The three-minute video time limit on Snapchat resulted in hundreds of videos, taking up close to three times the max storage. Oopsies. I eventually switched over to my regular camera, but it’s just not the same. Vlogging isn’t nearly as therapeutic as actual journaling, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
With hand-written journals must come a really nice pen. I’ve used gel pens that seem to only dry out in the space you’re trying to write in. Boo. I like using mechanical 0.7mm pencils when they’ve been shaved down to the perfect angle of graphite, where your handwriting magically turns into an elementary teacher’s whiteboard font. But the best writing utensil has to be those Sharpie pens with the shiny ring around the middle. My emotions feel more valid when I write about them with that pen. More sophisticated.
Journaling is not always about ranting. It’s about processing my emotions practically and efficiently that I can look back on once I’ve moved on to see how I’ve improved. I try not to look back on old memories as embarrassing, because the fact that they’re embarrassing now means I’ve learned from them.
