Start a journal

“Imagine a room of people yelling different questions at you, all at once, and you’re supposed to give them answers immediately. Then you put each person in a line to address them one by one, pairing them with each other as needed. That’s what journaling does for me. I started journaling because I wanted to find a friend in myself when I was 8, and I loved writing, so I would write in my journal as if I was sending a letter to a friend. Then it became something I should be doing (which made me stop doing it) I wasn’t writing a whole lot for about 10 years or so, then I took an English class in college that always had a 2-5 minute period of free-writing. I realized how much I felt better, so I started journaling again. Felt my racing thoughts slow down and sort out properly. Now I write when I need to, I try not to make it an expectation of myself, because then I will feel so much pressure to do it, I will avoid it. Usually when everything in my head is going a mile a minute and I need my brain to stop screaming.”

“June 29th was the day that I actually started journaling. I had been thinking about it for years. Finally, the desire to just start doing it coupled with the opportunity to begin this new habit made me break out the pen and page. Me? I wasn’t interested in journaling with a “goal”. Not that doing so is a bad thing, because it’s not. It just wasn’t something I was terribly excited about. [...] I usually write in a stream-of-consciousness style into my journal and use it as a means to both express myself and think about my dilemmas. I reflect on myself and my thoughts in a longer, more concentrated way than I typically do when going about my daily life. Its been therapeutic, honestly.”