On Keeping a Journal

“In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself.”

Susan Sontag

Ten years ago, I started a journal. No fancy Moleskine, just a simple Google Doc. I figured the easier I made it to write in it, the longer I would keep it going. Today, I have 200 pages and 75,000 words worth of musings, rants, revelations, ambitions, anxieties, confessions and observations all in one place.

I started it because I wanted a parlor where I could have an honest chat with myself, somewhere private where I could examine the movements of my mind by throwing them on a page. I was also looking for a raft to save the mundane bits of life that would otherwise be swept away in the waves of memory.  

In no particular order, these are some observations from a decade of journaling. 

1/ Yearning precedes action. Back in 2014, I wrote in a very large font “Stop reading. Start making”. I had a creative urge but no clear idea of what would satisfy it. It took seven more years for me to start this newsletter. I learned not to be impatient or restless when facing faint signals and let time do the work.   

2/ Watching the mind change. It’s one thing to know that you change your mind. It’s another to read yourself holding strong opinions and overturning them later. It makes you hold your beliefs a little more lightly and perhaps made me a bit more humble about the ones I feel so strongly about. 

3/ Mining the self: When you’ve got 200 pages of personal writing written over ten years, you’re sitting on a pile of insights about yourself. I hit “Control + F” for the sentence “I love” in my diary to get a sense of what would come up: Scandinavian literature, the word “solace”, my son’s laughter, cities by the water, side projects, one-word sentences, irreverence. This seemingly random list of things turns out to be a pretty granular picture of my personal taste. 

4/ Success on your own terms. Ten years ago I wrote that within a decade, I’d like to have lived in many different places and have pushed myself to learn new skills. I’ve since lived in Paris, London, San Francisco and New York and worked in three very different jobs. I’m glad I wrote this down. It’s easy to lose sight of your own definition of success.

5/ Energy triggers. Keeping a record of your mood is like sketching your personal energy map. You’ll start recognizing situations that set your soul alight and the ones that pour a bucket of mud over it. For instance, I’ve discovered that days of solo work, without the opportunity to bounce off ideas with someone else, are not my most productive. 

6/ A Swiss Army Knife for the mind. Over the years, my journal became more than the place I’d scribble random impressions and rants about my day. I use it to set yearly goals, experiment with poetry or simply treat it as a warm up gym for the writing I want to publish. It is as much the friend I can endlessly rant to as it is the coach keeping me honest with my goals and the fellow writer I know I’ll get no judgment from. 

In “Swann’s Way,” Proust describes remembering as entirely contingent on encountering objects that evoke specific memories. In one of the opening chapters, the author triggers a flood of childhood memories by tasting a madeleine dipped linden herbal infusion. However, the relationship with our past selves doesn’t have to be entirely left to chance. This is why we compulsively take pictures of a first birthday cake, a perfectly executed dish, or the sun projecting an orange sheen on the roofs of our neighborhood. Journaling is a recognition that memory-making is a craft that takes effort, and the reward is bringing the majority of our selves, now in the past, a little bit closer.