July Journaling
Let me tell you about my night routine. Shower, get ready for bed, scroll social media for an hour (maybe two), rethink my life, and journal.
As I open my journal, I have a million things going on in my head, but looking at that blank piece of paper scares away every thought. It seems more of a challenge rather than an opportunity.
Yes, I know journaling is difficult. Writing down your feelings on paper seems vulnerable, doesn't it? Like you're baring your soul to an inanimate object, which somehow feels even more exposing than a real person.
For the longest time, the idea of writing out my feelings felt very dramatic or rather pointless. In the beginning, staring at the blank page, my thoughts would be, what are you even going to write? It's just a waste of time. This isn't going to solve your problems. And that's it... I closed my journal and stuffed it back into my drawer. Yet, the next night, I kept up the routine. I opened the journal to a crisp blank page and tried to push past the challenges to try and write something, anything, down.
Journaling is like having a string that is all knotted up. The daunting idea of having to untangle urges me to give up. However, through every tug, every pull loosens the knot. That's what journaling does to my mind; it takes every worry, every dream, every annoyance, and every small joy and lays them out one by one.
Even though journaling slowly becomes easier, I still have to remind myself some days that this is for me. All of these thoughts and dreams are for me. There are no "likes" or "comments" here. There is nothing here except me, my journal, and my thoughts. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that this is a safe zone. Nobody is here to judge me, to tell me I am just "overthinking."
Some days, the entry would be pages long, while others would be a few words. "I'm tired. Overwhelmed." and that's perfectly Okay. Through this, my mind felt clearer after every word.
For this month, I wanted to highlight Journaling July to encourage you to push past that barrier and write even a few words down because, as Charles Kettering aptly put it, "A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved."
