Appreciation post: The exact moment I realized my journaling was just me complaining to paper

Last Tuesday I was sitting in my usual spot at the coffee shop downtown, writing in my journal like I do every morning. I flipped back through the last month of entries and it hit me - every single one was about something that annoyed me or went wrong. My boss, traffic, the weather. I wasn't processing anything, just dumping frustration. So I changed it up that day and wrote three things I actually saw happening around me instead. That one shift made the whole thing feel useful instead of just venting. Has anyone else caught themselves in a rut like that with their writing?

3 comments

3 Comments

mason.drew14d ago

Started flipping through my journal at 2am last week and realized I'd written "today was fine" three days in a row with nothing else. Now I just draw little doodles of my cat in the margins instead of worrying about what to say.

hollyscott14d ago

Your cat doodles thing is actually backed up by some research I read. There was this study about how creative journaling, even just simple drawings, helps people process emotions way better than just writing words. Something about how drawing activates different parts of the brain that words don't always reach. So your little cat doodles are probably doing more for your mental health than those empty "today was fine" entries ever did. Plus it's way more fun to look back at cute drawings than boring sentences anyway.

jamiesullivan14d ago

Holly that "today was fine" thing hit way too close to home. I swear half my journal entries from last month are just "same" written in different sizes. Guess I'm not as deep as I thought when I'm drawing stick figure cats with googly eyes at midnight. But for real, if doodling dumb little cats is somehow making me process my feelings better than my pathetic attempts at prose, then I'm all for it. My brain must be a total mess if cat doodles are the key to unlocking my emotions.