"WHY" I journal, and how I started

My grandma passed away in 2013; she had journaled nearly every day of her life. As I flipped through the pages of her entries, she transformed from the wholesome facade I had painted of my “grandmother,” into someone with depth, humor, desires, strengths and flaws and original thoughts and awareness to so much around her. She was witty even with herself. She developed into a person I hadn’t *seen* while she was alive.

So, I started profiling the people in my life. To take notice of them. To *see* them, sometimes maybe even at that deeper, beautiful, subconscious level that they don’t see themselves. Celebrating the people around me, in my own private way, was how I got started putting thoughts and feelings onto paper, and having a more intimate experience with the people, places, and things in my life.

At first, I wrote inconsistently at best. But found that over time, it evolved into a way for me to organize my active mind and process my conflicting emotions. As if I didn’t know how to interpret it all unless I put words to the experiences I was having. Saying, “I’m anxious” or “I’m scared” or “I’m excited” … those words … they were never *heavy enough* to describe the truly human experience I was having in the moments. I needed to find a way to describe it more thoroughly, more deeply, more true to myself, and only for myself. Many people choose other forms of self expression; words on paper is my art form of choice.

I continued evolving in my journaling. Needing the paper to help me sort my thoughts. If I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull my journal out, and mind map everything on my heart and mind. If I poured it out on paper, it was out of my head, and it was a cue to my brain that it was in safe keeping, and I could reflect on it later. I compared it to uploading my files to the cloud, so I can keep my hard drive clear and running smoothly. I turned to journaling to help me clear and sort my mind, but the “paragraph form” didn’t always work for me.

Now I use it in every way. When I feel inspired or lethargic. When I feel alive or melancholy. When I feel stuck or trapped or stressed or poetic or artistic. Sometimes it’s paragraphic and sometimes its bullet points and sometimes its aesthetically pleasing and sometimes it’s a sloppy mess of scribbles because my thoughts are coming out faster than my hand can move. Sometimes my words are clear and articulate and sometimes they’re cryptic and short. Sometimes it propels me forward with visions and goals for the future. Sometimes it helps me to process or simply record the past. When I read back over the weeks or the months or the years, I can notice self-destructive patterns that I am able to learn from and change. And if I’m doing it right, it also helps to ground me in the present, rather than using it as a crutch to keep me always *somewhere else* (as in, always in the future or the past or in some hypothetical place that is a worst-case-scenario play-by-play of something that likely won’t even happen! Is it just me 😏).

For me, there are no rules. It’s never perfect. The words aren’t always profound. The drawings are quite rudimentary. It’s simply when I have something stirring in my heart or my mind (especially when that something is conflicted between my heart AND my mind!) and I need someone share it with. And that person is me. Because at the end of the day, the person who knows me best, and who wants what’s best for me, and whose opinion matters most… is me.