Journaling. Before college, that word triggered images of a teenage girl locked in her room starting every entry with “Dear Diary”. Don't get me wrong, like many teenage girls I had tried multiple times to keep a diary, but it always made me feel silly. What was the purpose of talking to yourself? I was going to think about it regardless and if I really needed to talk about it that's what friends were for. My view on journaling stayed constant all the way through high school, but when I started college, I entered an entirely different world.
Everything in college moved a lot faster than it had before. Every day there was something new. Stress from family, drama between friends from home, and stress from classes usually caused by my poor time management skills. I have always been a warrior and I tend to spend too much time inside of my own thoughts, but with college everything going on inside my head tripled and it had nowhere to go. Sure I could talk about it with friends, but a lot of the time it didn't help very much, so once again I bought a journal and tried talking to myself once again. I was surprised what writing everything down finally did. It cleared my mind and gave me the focus that I needed. Writing made college doable.
The biggest benefit I get from journaling is that it clears my head and allows me to think. In an average week of college you can fight with your best friend, fail a test, have your parents lecture you for not coming home enough, all while finding out the guy you were talking to thinks you “deserve better”. Thinking about all these things at once can distract you in class, make you lose focus on what you really need to be worrying about, and leave you with a lot of misguided anger and stress. Most of the time I talk to my friends and sisters about what is going on in my life to try and sort out what is important and what is just a waste of my time, but sometimes these things alone don't always work. That’s where journaling helps me. I become my own shrink, and I am very good at it. There have been numerous times that I have wrote everything down and realized that I’m not actually mad at my friend, I’m just mad at myself for caring too much about something completely unrelated. That’s when I finally get to focus on what my real problems are and get rid of the insignificant things that are causing nothing but stress.
Along with helping me weed out what isn't important in my life, journaling has also allowed me to focus on what's important. I have grown a lot since starting college and the woman I aim to be has changed as well. Looking back through some of my early entries it's funny what I let affect me when I should have just blown it off. I know exactly who I am and who I want to be. Most importantly, no matter how silly talking to myself might seem I know who I am. I get to be my own biggest fan instead of my biggest critic. I spend time reflecting on who I am and I get to change things when I don't like who I am becoming. I believe self-awareness is important. Before I started journaling I could have never told you who I was. I think everyone should take the time to sit down and try to figure out who they are, but that's just me.
The most basic thing that I get out of journaling is the one thing that writing always does for me. It allows me to set goals for what I need to do. Sometimes things just don't go the way I want them to, mainly because I lose track of what I need to accomplish. When I get frustrated at myself for falling short of my own expectations, I write about it. I give myself some of the greatest pep talks and then I promise myself that I'll do better. If I don't write it down, it doesn't have the same affect on me. Someone once said “A goal not written is only a wish” and that speaks a lot to me. My journal is an outline for all my goals. It has all of my biggest mistakes, all of my achievements, and all my plans written down so that if I ever forget that anything is possible I can just look back and see that I've done it before and I can do it again. Journaling lets me motivate myself and push myself to get stuff done because no one else can push me the way I push myself.
I've been journaling continuously for about two years now and it is probably the only thing that has kept me sane. I don't journal every day, mainly because there isn't enough time or maybe I just slept all day and there was nothing to report, but I try to make myself journal at least once a week. I've learned that if I don't, my thoughts end up scattered and I am not half as productive as I need to be. Journaling has become my way of refocusing my energy on the things I find important in my life. It has helped me grow and reflect through college and everyone should try journaling, if only to get in touch with themselves.
