Summer is afoot. Like I mentioned last week, being home is like a catch-22: free-time rocks and also overwhelms.

Besides a reasonable to read list that’ll keep me busy till August (of 2021) and a book that I’ve been working on for a few years I’ve taken up the task of transcribing my old journals, the remaining 22 of them—with the majority from within the past 6 years though about 10 of from 2005-2009.

Here are a few reasons why keeping a journal is excellent decision.

1. The perks of time travel
2. It’s heuristic therapy
3. So we can analyze your thoughts when you’re hailed as genius post-mortem

“If you could go back in time, what would you tell your younger self?”

That’s a nice thought experiment, right? What with all our profound wisdom gained from the microscopic investigation of our psychic movements throughout the years surely there is some nugget of jñana¹ to bestow upon our tadpole selves.

The situation unravels however when a series of break-ups, myriad failed attempts at psycho-homeostasis via self-medication, and the cancerous guilt of time misspent over the years compounded with the realization that you’re not a Mozart and more likely a Beethoven², has left you jaded, bitter, generally pessimistic, and what’s worse – realistic regarding your abilities to manifest wholly what abstract unique snowflake-like internal self-conception you have into a tangible persona, and the likelihood your tadpole self would disregard any of that “advice” is as probable as you disavowing Douglas’³ next month’s Mega Lotto numbers.

The perks of this time-travel work opposite our intuition in fact, a chance to read what that younger, more hopeful (if that’s the case), and honest self that journal entry was written by to recharge or reorient our north to.

Here’s an unedited example from my March 20, 2008 entry:

I wore navy blue today to represent my state...How much only happens once?!

So much. So many things I’ve said, heard, so many occurrences I’ve witnessed…how I appreciate the ones I remember! I do them honor, the moments I reposit. I feel them and value them.
I want to show the holy light of life I’ve seen in everything, in my poetry, in my gestures, in my smile, my kiss, my bike ride, every action, each step. I want to be a reminder of lifes beauty.

I don’t remember having recently written something so honest in terms of intentionality, though reading that 8 year-old entry I’m inspired and strengthened to want to do that kid justice.

Keeping a journal is like a two or three tier process depending on how far you take it.

1. Writing is already therapeutic –
2. If you’re a writer, I’m probably preaching to the choir –
3. The superficial, but equally relevant therapeutic aspect

The jumble that is, unless you’re some ascetic who successfully practices mantra yoga⁴, constant in our minds is overwhelming. We get so backed up with information that sometimes all it takes is someone asking “what’s up” for that little Dutch boy to walk away from the dam and totally unleash the vast, often totally incongruent, thoughts that pool inside us.

The page serves as a mirror to our mind but requires the unfogging act of writing to reveal. Keeping a journal also warms you up to the idea of talking to yourself and not needing to speak when spoken to, which may get you to want to hang out with other people just for the self-rewarding aspect of not having to deal with yourself – this is sort of unfair to other people.

The page is without judgement at all. Its just a surface to project onto. If there’s any judgement – its yours. Conversely, if you’re honest with yourself, it’ll take in every line of sincerity you give it.

This is therapeutic because as you write and give opening to those thoughts that are otherwise homeless, vagrant, and maddened in their wandering, a home, a resting place, a nice ordered and cozy place among others of their kind. Maybe there’s more to this? Hmmm….

You should already be keeping some repository of your thoughts, poems, scribbles, notes, etc.

This is important so you can remember those brilliant as-you’re-making-peace-with-the-day-underneath-your-sheets-“but-what-about-this-thought!” thoughts that seem to be eternal refugees of the collective unconscious doting upon those minds who actually harbor and cultivate them their gifts of glory.

Also because writing is really like 50% (?) of actually writing, editing and revising is equally as important.

There are definitely some wonderful lines or stanzas in those journals that can be tweaked and ambiguated into full-flung prose, poems, stories, and maybe books.

Say you’re having a lousy day…

If you did what I told you and journaled, you probably have some nice day transcribed there with all the erratic jovial notations scribbled quickly on the page that facilitated by a blue (or whatever color you prefer) sticky post-it can be quickly retrieved as a reminder that good and bad days are kind of part of the deal that comes with having an existential experience as a human.

This also works the other way. If you’re having a good day you can look back at to the entry where you were just having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day⁵ and feel relief that you made it through, that it got better a bit.

This is probably the most superficial yet valid reason to keep a journal. Have you ever read Plath of Ginsberg’s journals? How about Marcus Aurelius’? Its so good they (Plath and Ginsberg’s) were published on their own, and Aurelius’ were published as his Meditations. On an iMessage voice message my friend recently illuminated upon me the fact that a journal is “its own form of art” which is a relief for a writer (and possibly artists of other mediums) because even if you’re not penning a poem, prose, short or long story piece, but still writing about your own day-to-day then you’re still engaged in the process.

While keeping a journal, keep in mind that you can time travel, self heal, and engage yourself in an artistic process constantly because of it.

Perhaps there are more reasons that are unique to other individuals though these three keep me keeping on.

Write on!

1. Sanskrit for knowledge, root of gnosis, generally knowledge or specifically spiritual insight.
2. A take on the nature vs. nurture argument wherein Mozart represents an individual born with innate genius and Beethoven stands in for the individual who has to hone in and polish raw material in a striving for it, likely through suffering and great struggle.
3. A local self-ascribed time-traveler in Santa Monica who spends time pacing in front of the Starbucks on 26^th & Wilshire repeating “what can you do?”
4. Reciting mantrum (man-mind tra­-to liberate) constantly to the point of total absorption in the primordial and pure vibration of the universe, generally considered aum, though there are many mantras that assist people of different mental types to reach it.
5. Ref. to a what-to-expect-from-life-and-how-to-deal-with-it book by Judith Viorst for children.