Keep a journal

...for my own sanity. I need a way to process and this has worked well in the past. It’s just that it’s so difficult to make it a priority. So many other things to distract, so many other disciplines I’m trying to develop. I gotta figure out how to get it in. The real therapeutic stuff doesn’t really kick-in right away – you have to actually be writing for awhile. It’s like meditation – you don’t squeeze in the benefits of meditation in five minutes. (At least, I don’t think you do. lol)

...during a conference I was attending for a couple of days last week. lol Memo to public speakers: If the audience is journaling, it’s time to wrap it up.

...but hopefully I’ll get back to it this weekend. I really need to do it for my own good, but I’m distracted with writing a novel (NaNoWriMo) right now.

...I was going to get to it again this past weekend, but in the final hour (late last night) I found myself journaling away on my laptop. Not as much as I might write if I were setting aside serious time, but genuine reflection in print nonetheless. Whew!

...to write some this weekend. It’s not that I hate doing it, it’s just that I always find a million other things to distract me. But I’m feeling the need for the catharsis so I’m gonna make myself do it. When I finish a session, I always feel rewarded and like it was time well-spent. Go figure.

I thought about doing the journal thing tonight, but instead decided to make progress on a book I’m reading and then follow-up on all my 43Things posts. This is like a journal, right?

I’m not really making myself do this on a schedule, but I’ve written a TON in the past couple months. I find it hugely cathartic and I’ve also found that insights start coming to me when I’m about 30 minutes into it or so. :)

I’m not sure I’m strictly a journal person. I’m actually writing something somewhere most of the time, it’s just not collected into one place, neither is there any kind of theme. “Recurring themes” maybe, but it’s mostly me jotting down thoughts or trying to reason out whatever I’m struggling with. Should I keep this as an explicit goal, or just keep doing what I’m doing?

I’m wondering if this goal is too vague for me. I haven’t been particularly diligent about keeping a generic journal, but I have made entries from time to time in a variety of different digital and analog “collections” of prose. lol Blogs, Facebook, Journler software, Moleskines, notebooks…I sort of have them all going and manage to enter something somewhere pretty regularly. I wish I could remember more specifically what I was shooting for when I listed this as a goal.

I wonder if there’s a good argument for consolidation. Thoughts?

lol I haven’t been very good about writing in my journals. In retrospect, I think it’s because I don’t have anything to be all melancholy about. I should surprise my future self by writing something happy and positive for a change. ;)