Elizabeth Watson

On Jan. 12, 2013, I was upset. A photo could perhaps remind me of this fact, but the silhouettes of old teardrops and the all-caps-ferociously-written-over-many-a- time phrases such as “NOT FAIR” and “I HATE MY LIFE” paint a much more vivid story than some puffy-faced selfie. 

Maybe you’re not part of the whole “New Year New Me” crowd, and maybe you despise the popular notion of New Year’s resolutions. But this goes beyond picking up some new juicing routine or cutting down your time on Instagram Reels. I am simply using January as an excuse to prompt you to start this new habit. 

With a journal, you face the physical markings from a past version of you. You were there, touching that paper, scribbling away with those very same hands. Journals are time capsules. Open that page from the summer of 2015, and there your pre-pubescent self is, scribbling away about something that is most definitely life changing and utterly important. You read it now and chuckle at how irrelevant the topic of those scribbles actually became, but you are transported into the mind of this version of yourself and you feel for her nonetheless. 

Joan Didion categorizes those of us who keep journals as “a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” I don’t disagree. I guess it’s accurate to categorize this urge of mine to hold onto every era and moment of my life as having an ounce of this “presentiment of loss.” Fair. However, I also have a bone to pick with Ms. Didion: everyone should keep a journal. I don’t care what “breed” you are. 

So you probably read the title: How do you attack this journal? Let me give it a go. 

• You’re going to write with another pair of eyes in mind. Don’t. Maybe you’re imagining your mother sneaking into your bedside drawer. Maybe you’re imagining what your fans will think of you in twenty years when you’re famous and publish your journal — don’t publish your journal while you’re alive, that sounds god awful. Maybe you aren’t even imagining someone specific, but you just have a feeling your words will meet the eyes of someone else. You must not journal like this. When you’re alone, say, having a nice cup of coffee and a stream of thought to yourself, do you omit words or ideas? I sure hope not.

Why even bother to journal if it’s going to have gaps and lies? Why spend this time of reflection and release thinking about opinions and thoughts of others? Don’t write for someone else. Don’t self-censor, and don’t create a fake persona. Find a drawer your mother won’t raid and be unapologetically authentic. 

• Consistency can be awesome. Consistency is not key. Often, I won’t even complete my entries. I’ll get interupted by this or that and forget that I’m leaving a story untold until three weeks later I open it up and quickly jot down “sorry! I’m back!” as if someone besides myself would care. And then when I pick up the story my mind is in a completely different place and god knows what I would have said if I had continued that first day. In an entry from my favorite red journal — Summer 2022 — I once again failed to complete my entry. The next day I re-entered the world of journaling by saying “I don’t know what my yesterday self was planning to write on here, but my today self had a really rough afternoon, so let’s talk about it.” And that was that. Yeah, it’s not perfect. But flaws and gaps are authentic and authenticity is a journal’s soulmate.

Don’t be scared by the thought of journaling every. Single. Day. Sure, I bet there are some life changing daily-entry–journals out there. But doing it everyday is not going to make it “good.” Having a consistent journal with completed entries every day is like being the type of person who decorates a Christmas tree with the same type of ornament so it appears pleasing: you lose all the texture, all the nostalgia of ugly preschool glitter-bombs and oddly-shaped knit snowmen — what makes it special. 

• Your journal doesn’t have to make sense. A lot of the time our minds don’t make sense. Let the sentences that appear at your pen’s tip flow onto the page. Allow for interruptions. Jot them down. It’s okay if your section on how you feel about a recent tragedy has an intermission to describe your craving for an apple galette. In fact, that’s fantastic. I want to read that entry on galettes and personal tragedy. 
• Use the second person. I mean, you don’t have to, but here’s why I think you should:

1. 1. It makes you feel like you’re speaking to someone else. And it’s so much easier to talk about some things when you’re confessing to another entity — not just re-reminding yourself. Some people may address their entries to God, and there’s a reason why “Dear Diary” is taught to be a beginner’s journaling entry. It can feel weird to spend so much time writing to yourself, about yourself. Add that “you” in there, and you’ve got yourself a makeshift therapist for zero dollars and zero cents.
   2. When you pick up your old journals and reminisce on that foolish past version of yourself, reading the word “you” makes you feel connected to past you in a way I don’t think is often very accessible. When I read a bit of my writing from 2014 and I read that “you,” I’m reaching through the page, grabbing the hand of my eight year old self, and she’s there, grabbing back. O.K., yeah, cheesy, but try it out. Get back to me in a couple of years.

• Utilize the list. Or the chart. Or whatever you want. Prose is the norm and does wonderful things, and poetry can always add some texture. But you can stray from both of them! Reading old lists of mine in journals is just about my favorite thing. The list allows for chaos but welcomes organization. The list is home to sporadic ideas and inharmonious thoughts. The list is a true teleport into the exact mind of its writer. 
• There are zero wrongs in journaling. Just get that pen moving on that paper. What if you don’t know what to write about? Talk about that. What if your grammar is horrendous and you religiously use Thesaurus.com so you don’t say “good” or “important” eight thousand times? Doesn’t matter. Omit those commas and say “important” if that’s what emerges from your brain. What if you hate self-reflection and it makes you incredibly uncomfortable that if you start talking about your feelings you’ll want to shrivel up and die? Perfect. Write about it. 

Just write.