Over the past few weeks, I have actively taken steps to discover my inner and higher self. I have attended meditation sessions, and women’s circles, and begun to explore spirituality in ways that I find meaningful. While I have only been to about two or three sessions so far, I have found them to be helpful in providing me with tools to help clear away negative energy. Each session focuses on a specific topic; one week it was about manifesting abundance, and last week it was about exploring feminine sexuality. During each session, participants complete an exercise where we write out all of our thoughts regarding a topic, all of the things we want to clear away, and then we share them with the group.

Writing in this way has allowed me to rediscover journaling. While I have always loved to write—and buy more journals than I will ever need (seriously I have about 20 unused notebooks in my room right now, plus another ten half-filled ones)—I have been always apprehensive about journaling. The times that I did try, I would always write about my day and get bored.

You know the drill: You would write about your day, say you went to this place and that place, saw this person and that person. I would get bored with my own boring writing, and I would stop, or I would vent out my frustrations and just feel like the journal was a venting space with no pathway to real solutions to my very real problems.

For a few years, I would use the notebooks as poetry journals, writing between five and ten poems a day. However, now that I am older, the poems come less and less, and I value quality over quantity.

But now that I have been attending these sessions, I have vowed to journal again, give it another go. Here are my top five reasons why:

5. I buy way too many notebooks and need to use them up.

You may think I am kidding, but I am not. I have always been obsessed with notebooks (and office and school supplies in general), so much so that each time I go to Barnes and Noble or Target or any of those types of stores, I make a beeline for the journal and notebook section. I have a process that I go through: I look at all the journals, pick up the ones whose covers catch my eye, and check out the quality of the paper. If the lines are college-ruled, it goes into the possibilities pile, if not it goes back on the shelf for someone else to buy. If the journal meets my criteria, I walk around with it as I check out other things in the store. My best friend and I call this our “thinking about it” phase. We go through the store picking out things we like, then take a few minutes to look through everything and decide what we are actually going to take out of the store. More often than not, I always leave with at least one journal or notebook.

4. There are so many prompts/guided journals/writing ideas online that there really is no excuse.

Everywhere you turn nowadays there’s a new guided journal. Whether you’re a fan of art, cooking, coloring, travel, books, or storytelling, there’s a journal for you. Not to mention all the websites that have writing challenges like 30 days of gratitude or 50 self-love writing prompts. Pintrest is a great place to find journaling ideas from people all over the world. I created my own board with ideas and started writing by listing positive affirmations.

3. It helps me focus and quiet my mind.

Have you ever had the experience where you’re sitting quietly in a room, clearing your mind, and then you just hear things come to you? I find that happens to me when I sit down to write. By sitting and staring at a blank notebook page or at a blank computer screen, I, in effect, force my mind to quiet, which, in turn allows me to tap into what I am really thinking. Often times, I’ve written things I didn’t even know I needed to write. It’s only been after I have written a page and read it back that I’ve realized the importance of the words.

2. It helps me de-stress and process emotions.

In her article, “The Art of Journaling”, Joanne Broder Sumerson writes that 43 percent of adults don’t handle stress effectively. She also says that we are entitled to our feelings, and that a journal can be a safe place to vent and unleash our emotions without feeling foolish. If I am angry or upset, sad or happy, or even unsure of what I am feeling at all, after a few minutes or hours of writing, I feel better. The act of writing alone—of putting pen to paper, of making letters out of ink, calms me, gives me a chance to breathe.

1. I have a record of memories on which I can look back.

Some people like to take pictures, make scrapbooks, or create videos; I like to read. I like to read about memories. I have all the poetry journals and diaries that I’ve ever written in a box in my room and, from time to time, I like to pull them out and read what I wrote. It’s always interesting to re-discover what was important to me back then, and how it differs or is similar to what is happening currently. It helps me to remember that being human is always a work in progress and no matter what we are feeling, things never look as good (or bad) as they seem.