Journaling

    After October, I really started to take into account the small things in my life that provided me with stability during such a strenuous time in my college life. My friends who would check up on me, the simple but filling meals I would make for myself after a long day, and the routines that gave me something to stick to. One of the most important routines I kept was journaling how my day went, every single night at 11:45 PM. I took it up as a writing challenge for this academic year for fun, but it wasn't until I was reflecting on the past month that I realized how important it's become to me and my mental health. Before I tell you to pick it up for yourself, I figured you might want to hear about the background info on why I started and what sort of benefits I got out of it so far!

    For context, I've issued myself a challenge every year since freshman year of high school, which tend to focus on different routines. They don't always have to relate to writing, but rather pushing my levels of commitment or routine-building skills, since that's something I've always considered extremely important. My first challenge in 9th grade was to take a selfie every day, in the same pose, for a year.  This was pretty clearly inspired by videos like THIS ONE, but even though I did complete a full year of selfies, there were a few issues that made me consider the challenge kind of a failure. The most obvious one was the sudden COVID-19 pandemic which sort of killed the variety of background imagery (since I stayed home for the latter third of the year), but being completely honest it was a shitty challenge beforehand. Where's the introspection? What are you actually exercising by just taking a picture every day? I thought it was kind of lame, so I ditched the picture idea at the end of the year. 

    My next challenge was like a pseudo-journal, where I would recap what I did everyday for a year, but with the limit of having to fit all of the information in the 280 character limit of a tweet. This was a little more interesting, since I had to make time for it at the end of every day, but instead of this restriction breeding creativity, it just ended up feeling like an arbitrary limit on what I could include, so every daily entry wound up being more of a "list of things I did today" instead of a proper journal. So that was another fail. For my senior year of high school, I challenged myself to take a video every day of whatever the most important moment of my day was, and to my credit, I really enjoyed that! It was something I was able to commit to every day, and even though I wasn't reflecting on it in the moment, it allowed me to look back on my final year of high school a few years later and reexperience what I considered to be the most important moments of my life at the time, which is a really sweet experience. My first challenge success!

    When I started college, I opted for a challenge that was less of a daily routine, and more of a creative writing challenge: write a script/short story for each semester. In comparison to my previous daily challenges, this seems like a huge step-down in pressure (which in all honesty it kind of was, since I was also getting accustomed to my new life living separate from my family and starting college). In reality, this was an exercise of a different kind: would I still be able to maintain passion/consistent effort on a project even if I didn't have to think about it every day? This wasn't a consistency challenge, but rather a reliability one. Would I be able to trust myself to get extra work done to stay on schedule if I consciously took time off from working? The answer: yes! I got two scripts written at the time, one of which I submitted to some writing competitions. I was pretty satisfied with the results! This blog was my college sophomore year challenge, where I was testing what my writing style would be in a less formal, but still consistent setting. I didn't have to worry about my voice or research when writing blogs, but I would have to worry about sticking to my twice-a-week posting schedule, and find topics to write on, just like I would if I ended up working in a journalistic setting. I enjoyed this challenge so much that I decided to just adopt it as a part of my life (though with much less pressure, just one post per month). Greatest challenge I've ever done!

    Finally, we arrive at this year, my third year as a college student, and my new challenge for the year: journaling. I've always had an interest in journaling (evident by my early attempts at daily journaling challenges) but I always ended up wanting my writing to be public, so I could share my stories. But a realization I had over the last year, while I was blogging, was that I don't necessarily want to share everything I think of, despite what I used to think. For me, writing finds meaning through being shared, consumed, and appreciated by other people. Stories are meant to be shared, right? But even then, there is no writer in existence that writes with 100% honesty. Some thoughts are embarrassing, some stories can't be publicized, and in general, no one should have their life 100% on display. I found myself holding back sometimes when I would write, just because I didn't want to share certain details, even if they were completely innocent, simply because I wanted to regain a sense of privacy in my life. I needed a writing outlet that is just for me, with no other reason to exist beyond me. Selfish? Maybe. But here's what I got out of it:

    As you can probably tell from what I've been talking about already, I have a tremendous appreciation for routine and daily practices. I have an alarm set at 11:45 PM every night to remind me to journal before clocking out for the night, and even though it sounds annoying, it's probably one of my favorite things to do every night. Having a set time to sit down and reflect on your day has been really grounding and stabilizing (especially last month), and it feels like a sort of meditation to wind down your brain at the end of the day before bed. Even on days where I'm travelling or don't have my journal on hand, the alarm goes off anyways, prompting me to excuse myself for a moment to jot down some notes on my phone so I can write my journal entry whenever I get the chance later. It's easy to get caught up in the chaos of everyday life, where class, chores, social events, and personal responsibilities get blended into a frenzy where it feels like you can't catch a break. Having a set moment to calm down and take inventory of everything that's happening has done wonders for my anxiety and stress relief, and it's something I'd recommend to anyone who has problems with regulating emotions or anxious feelings.

    The other thing that I've really come to appreciate thanks to my daily journaling is my memory. I've always been a very sentimental person when it comes to memories and recalling past experiences, whether they be through photos, videos, or souvenirs. But something that I've come to realize over the last few months is how many small moments disappear from my memory without knowing. Sure, I can tell you about what I did when I went on a trip for Spring Break, but can I tell you what I did with my friends a few weeks ago? Can I remember how nervous I felt in the days before a job interview? When was the last time I spoke to my friend? These aren't necessarily big or important things to remember at all times, but there's a scary amount of small moments like those that I'd like to revisit, but fail to remember on my own after enough time passes. It's nice to have photos and videos to remember doing activities with people, but how often do you remember your internal thoughts during that experience? Did you enjoy the day or were you thinking about something else at the time? 

    Clearly, this is something that I think about a little too much. I don't know if I'd call it an anxiety or an insecurity, but I do know that memory is really important to me. And journaling daily has allowed me to get more comfortable with how I remember things. By writing a page every night, it makes me consider what I deem important enough to write down to be recorded forever. Sometimes I start off an entry in the morning to jot down a particularly weird dream, or other times I leave a blank space for me to write something down on the morning after, to see if I still felt the same way as I did that night. I've been able to write how I feel about big events, like job interviews, trips with friends, and seeing my family, but I've also written about certain songs I listened to that day, my shitty review of a movie I half-watched, or a random interaction with a stranger. And the best part? Whenever I decide to flip through my journal to a random day, I get to reexperience it all. Thanks to journaling, I never have a boring entry to read through. I retroactively infuse each day with interest and excitement, even if I didn't think it was a particularly interesting day at the time. It's transformed the way I go about each day of my life in the best way possible.

    So. I want to issue a challenge to the few people who read through my blog posts: try to journal at the end of every day, for just one week. 7 days, 7 pages. I've already roped some friends of mine into joining me! Set aside some time before bed, after you brush your teeth and change into something more comfortable, and sit down at a desk and write down what you did that day, how you felt, and any random thoughts you might've had that day. But once you finish that page, you aren't allowed to touch it until the end of the week. And even then, I'd recommend waiting another week before you read through your journal. What moments have you forgotten about? Which thoughts persisted throughout the week? What small joys do you rediscover in the mundane?