On Journaling

And why you should do it too

When I say the word “diary,” what probably comes to your mind is a bedazzled, heart-locketed high school girl’s book of secret crushes and mortal enemies, tucked somewhere under her mattress or in the depths of a drawer. Not that there’s anything wrong with this Disney-esque vision of a diary — I’m all for bedazzling and dainty heart-lockets — but in my early teenage years, the journaling I saw on-screen seemed frivolous, even embarrassing. However, at eighteen, I couldn’t be happier spending mounds of pounds on ornately engraved Paperblanks diaries and seductively sleek pens. Writing at my desk in the morning, overlooking the tumbling North Sea and its sweeping, curling mist, I feel like some gown-wearing, slightly-tortured Austen heroine. So, having journaled for the better part of four years, I thought I might lure you, reader, into trying it, too.

Now, as journaling is a personal narrative, it will look different for each individual. My own journaling has evolved vastly over the years. I started out with list-like recollections, journaling dutifully every day, and eventually grew bored of the tedious ritual. I then understood that journaling isn’t something I can schedule; it lies, for me, in spontaneity. Some weeks, I’ll journal only once, for fifteen minutes. Others, I’ll write for hours each day. I’ve noticed that I journal most prolifically when I am confused, when there’s something in my life I desperately need to dissect. Journaling is the scalpel with which I can cut open my mind, observe its entangled anatomy and try to make sense of the mess. 

Journaling has been widely employed as a therapeutic tool. Writing about your life is facing it, too. It is a conversation, a confrontation, one in which you can be wholly honest and unforgivingly raw — the private nature of the art affords you that. Journaling builds cognitive skills essential for emotional expression, processing, and self-regulation. It’s like the script of your consciousness. It collects your ruminations and makes them smaller, in a way, stuck there on paper. This lets us understand, physically, by seeing. I think that’s a little easier than trying to wrangle meaning out of your mind, where thoughts flicker and dissolve with chaotic rapidity. Moreover, in trying to find the right words, we process conflict in a creative, productive way. This all leads to increased emotional intelligence. Not to mention how incredibly cathartic journaling is — especially when using one of those pens that makes a sharp swishing sound as it grazes the paper. 

To paint a more diverse portrait of journaling, I interviewed a few friends. Lucia Heathcote, a first-year student, keeps a bullet journal in which she not only writes, but saves clippings, boarding passes, maps, wristbands, and other memory-containing tidbits. Heathcote remarked that “journaling is useful in the moment, but more so when you go back to see how you’ve grown, changed, how what you value has evolved.” Similarly, Solene Graham lays out her life in a stream of email journals. When asked about her writing process, the first year shared that she waits two to three weeks to build up an entry. She writes with emotive accuracy, filling her entries with arcs, minuscule absurdities, and comical details in a story of a kind. Graham noted that you learn a lot about yourself through the act of journaling; what moments you emphasise, on which intricacies you elaborate, can tell you a lot about your life.

Sofia Martin, another first-year student, has journaled off and on for the majority of her life. Martin shared that her entries are chronological. This way, she can capture memories and tuck them away to read later. When asked about a specific thread she was able to trace, Martin said, smiling, that she could locate in her journal the very day she heard about St Andrews, the exact moment it became her dream school, anxieties over her application and the final excitement of acceptance. 

Martin’s words on written evolution touched me. If journaling reveals threads in our lives, so very, very few of those threads have ended. What we write about today, tomorrow, and the next — that random class you grew to love, that stranger you smiled at on the train, that trip to a new city — who knows where the threads will end.

Illustration by Maya Mason