Keep a journal

I do keep a journal. It stands on my shelf and it travels with me. One day I might even write in it.

The schedule I’m evolving does not have space for writing in my journal. I should not allow this to happen.

I’m still keeping a journal, and still writing frequently, but still writing in response to events. On the positive side, I’ve developed a bit of a guilty conscience that prompts me to write when I might otherwise forget.

I see it’s a long time since I’ve written anything about this goal. To update: I write in my journal regularly, and even fairly recently I filled a volume. Good going.

In the past week I experienced the good effect when the wider and more sober view brought about by writing in my journal turned a “negative” experience into a learning experience. If I had not written a little bit every day for weeks, making writing a habit, this event (which, in itself, was not spectacular or noteworthy in any other way) would have passed into the jumble of history, unregarded.

I’m not marking this as done yet; it’s not a habit yet (I’d like it to be like brushing my teeth) and I experience a lot of resistance doing it.

It is as it ever was. I start keeping a journal, then I start getting busy, then I don’t set aside time for my journal, then I stop keeping it. Hopefully, using 43T, it will be different this time.

I’ve been having an internal debate about wether I should keep an online journal. I’ve just read a book that convinced me that I shouldn’t. I’m using my journal to keep me in a healthy state of mind, and Richard O’Connor in Undoing Depression says that the journal should be private, because it contains private thoughts. The contents of the journal should be written without inhibition; if it is to be read, it implies an audience, which implies presentation.

I was away for the weekend, and the first thing I did this morning was to write it up. I general, though, I find that it is best not to sleep before writing the journal so that the memories of the emotions are not softened by sleep.

I’m writing my journal in a hard-backed manuscript book, uncovered and unadorned, just to make sure I don’t feel like I’m defiling a nice book with my crabby handwriting.

Somebody here gave me the idea to stick stuff in the journal. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that: I regularly stick stuff in my scientific journals. So now I have two mementos of recent events stuck in my journal. I hope there will be many more!

As treatment for my depression my psychologist asked me to keep a journal. I’ve done this, and it did help. Now I would like to keep on doing it, even though my depression has lifted a lot.

In particular, I want to write about my emotions so that I can really learn to be myself.

I also use the journal to tackle my procrastination. Just like I did when I was in therapy, every day I write the numbers 1 to 6 in the margin, and next to it I write down things I must do. I aim for a minimum of three, but it doesn’t really matter; some days just doesn’t have things to do. At the end of the day, or the next day, I write what had happened below the to-do list.