My journal is a mess – and yet, I love it
I've been keeping a journal for over a decade, mostly as way to just get stuff out of my head.
I’ve never established a consistent routine. There are periods during which I made multiple entries per day, but there are also multi-month stretches without any entries at all. What’s more, most of the content is crude and unpolished – it’s basically just a record of my stream of consciousness.
All this is to say that my journaling habit is as low-effort as it gets. But even though I’ve never put much effort into it, my journal already yielded some unexpected benefits, some of which I wanted to share with you:
- Wedding vows: by the time my wife and I married, we had been together for many years already. Thanks to my journal, I actually had a record of my thoughts and feelings from the very first time we met. Going through them again after so many years was amazing and made for a great foundation for our wedding vows.
- Kid’s milestones: even though our daughter is only a few months old, it’s fun to look for early signs of her personality. And since I’ve kept a detailed account of her elder brother at the same age, we can compare our two children with each other. It’s fun to see where our children are alike and where they are different.
- False memories: As I was writing about my inability to overcome my financial worries, I kept thinking about my past. In my memory, I used to be adventurous and spontaneous, but lost these traits over the years. However, digging through my journal revealed the truth: I have always thought long about my decisions, pondering about the pros and cons, and looking for the perfect time. I’m glad I’ve found a way to correct at least some of my false memories.
- Connecting with my past: every time I go through old journal entries of mine, I can’t help but wonder: “who is this person and what the hell where they thinking?” I’m amazed how much my beliefs, thoughts and tastes have changed over the years (to the point where I no longer recognize myself). Without the journal, I would have never noticed this, comically believing that I’ve always been and always will stay the same.
- Ups and downs: Several years ago, I’ve done a sentiment analysis of my journal entries. Using a dictionary where each word was assigned a happiness score (e.g. pain=unhappy, love=happy), I calculated an overall score for each journal entry and then charted the results over time. Astoundingly, the graph looked pretty close to a sine wave. No matter what happened, despite all the ups and downs, my happiness always returned to some base level eventually. Knowing this is incredibly comforting during the bad times.
My journal has become this rich source of information and amazing research tool, even though I never intended it to become one. And although I rarely go back to my old entries, it’s comforting to know they’ll be waiting for me when I need them.