Want to Write? Here’s Three Great Reasons to Journal and Two More Reasons To Journal For Your Mental Health
Writing a journal is recommended both for writers and for those who have less than perfect mental health. The first reason you should keep a journal is that your journal is your own private space to say what you want in any way you want. No one but you is supposed to read your journal so you should feel free to express yourself.
Reason number two for writing a journal is that it can be a way to save ideas that you go back to later. It is recommended that a journal be a special notebook (you can go bananas and use a leather-bound one or you can be frugal and buy a bunch of notebooks and pens at the dollar store) and that you write in it by hand. You can practice composing poems in it, you can write down cool phrases others say or that you overhear on the bus or in an elevator. You never know when you will hear something you want to save, so feel free to take your journal with you. I will never forget a friend’s words, “You are going to have to face the day or you’re going to live the night.” I used those words and sold a copy of the book I wrote with them in it to the guy who said the words.
Another reason why a writer should keep a journal is that not only can you take your journal everywhere, it won’t shatter if you drop it or run out of batteries like a laptop, but you can do like I do and put up a bulletin board above or beside the computer you write most on and write an outline or ideas for a writing project, rip the page out and tack it up where you can see it.
The two reasons why people would keep a journal for their mental health are simple. First, having a space to express yourself is not only healthy, you can go back over old journals and compare how you thought then to how you think about things now. It is a lot like therapy only it costs about $1.99 for a notebook and therapy costs as much as $175 an hour.
The second reason a journal is good for mental health is that you can write in it each day and talk about what’s working for you and what isn’t. Did you decide to quit a bad habit? A journal for say quitting smoking will help you get through the process of quitting, and if you fail to quit, you will have a record of what worked and what didn’t. It doesn’t just stop at bad habits though. You can talk about your day and how you feel about it. Your journal can be your best friend. Maybe you are struggling with watching a lot of daytime TV and wonder if you would be better off reading or taking a correspondence class. Maybe you will find out by journalling to your surprise that a class is just too much stress but you don’t want to miss out on a sitcom that is played every day. This could lead you to go out and buy the box set of the sitcom and instead of watching TV, watching a Youtube documentary once a day and working your way through the TV series with a friend who enjoys the show. This is a random example of how you can use journalling to improve your life.
There are a few tips with journalling. First of all, you don’t need to write in it every day. Journalling shouldn’t be a chore you do that you don’t enjoy. Just write when you have something you have to say or when you hear something cool or have a new take on something. In my case a lot of the time I write out pitch ideas for articles I want to propose to magazines. There is a real magic that happens when you write something down then leave it for a while and get back to it. You see it as though you are seeing it for the first time.
For you poets out there, journalling can really help your writing process. Most of my poems don’t start out being typed into a computer. My poems are written by hand and double-spaced in my journal. I write and then I go over the poems, changing rhymes or rhythms, making lines longer or shorter. When I feel I really have something, only then do I type it into my computer. This process makes me look at my writing differently and in the activity of transposing, the poem almost always gets changed and almost always improves. With the bare bones of my final poem on paper in a journal, I am able to add and modify my poetry. One such poem like this is below: (I experienced some formatting problems pasting this in, it was meant to be a series of two-line stanzas).
Valhalla’s Distant Shore
By: Leif Gregersen
October 18, 2022
So dim is the light that shines upon my soul
Odin without my lover I never shall be whole
In life we sometimes roll the dice and pray for peace
But my wandering heart longs for death’s release
I met my love before battle took its toll on me
Now I’m deep inside the fight and never shall be free
And so now as I stop to rest and pray
I summon up the will to face the day
Though I lead I am still led by those above
No time to waste to ponder unrequited love
Now, even as I rest, I prepare myself to die
For the flag that during a battle fell from the sky
Denmark is my land, my home, my pride
It is the birthplace of my love, my bride
Today the North Sea carries us to a distant land
Tomorrow will find us in battle hand to hand
It seems under the wind and above the waves
I hear the pounding of a drum that counts the days
Until I am dispatched to Valhalla’s distant shore
And my mortal body shall simply be no more
Too little time is left for me to regret or reminisce
Except to daydream of my sweet lover’s final kiss
I cross the seas and distant lands with battle weary men
Who, having battled hard will never be the same again
So many leave the lands of their family as we have done
As will so many young men until every war is won
As warriors we only have each other and our pain
Even knowing this each man would do it all again
