Sarah Gibbard Cook
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact

The Joy of Journaling

7/25/2016

12 Comments

 
​My grandson’s kindergarten teacher announced, “It’s time to write in your journals.” Shrieking with delight, the children raced for their pencils and started to print. It was apparently a highlight of their day, this time to write whatever they pleased. I’d like to think at least some of them will keep this joy alive into adulthood.

Daily or sporadic, morning or evening, pen or keyboard, matter-of-fact or filled with angst—there’s no one way to journal. Do what brings you joy or peace or clarity, if you choose to do it at all. My practice involves pen on yellow pad, usually in the morning, usually three pages from top to bottom. (Partial credit to Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way.) If my mind is spinning in circles, writing helps move it forward. If my mind is blank, some buried issue tends to surface about the middle of the second page.

Historians draw on diarists from Samuel Pepys to Anne Frank for invaluable information about major events and daily life. Genealogists must feel they’ve struck gold when they uncover a diary to flesh out the raw data. How do we weigh this archival value against the presumption of privacy in diaries that were never intended for posterity? I’m torn. I’ll read a journal with a clear conscience after the diarist’s death, but share only what seems harmless to survivors, like my mother’s notation from early in her marriage: “Accidentally locked myself in the basement. Puttered and carpentered for two hours till H. came home and let me out.” As for my yellow morning pages, the question won't arise; every few months the latest batch goes out for recycling.
12 Comments
Jeanne Witte
7/25/2016 09:32:43 am

Your memory of your mom being locked in the basement reminded me of my grandmother's diary. Quite mundane, and at the same time an interesting peek into what her life was like. On Jan. 1 she wrote her resolutions, which were surprisingly like many of mine: lose weight, exercise more, be more kind. Thanks for evoking this memory.

Reply
Sarah link
7/25/2016 10:53:05 am

Jeanne, I too was struck by the mundane aspect of my mother's entries, most of them brief capsules of the day's events. The basement entry gave my brother and me a chuckle; the mother we knew was surely less calm about it than her diary suggests.

Reply
Lisa
7/25/2016 10:00:37 am

Last fall I read the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. The first thing she has a reader or client do is journal about why we want to do this and what we hope to accomplish. I took the time to do the writing and was surprised what came up! Then I did the work, and this summer I can notice that the results have accomplished what I had hoped for.

Journaling for me is a way to ask questions of myself and get answers that I would never get if I wasn't writing. Is that because I can revisit my writing in a way that I can't revisit my thoughts? I can review my conclusions, for instance, when that's important (which it isn't always, sometimes journaling for me is just blah blah blah), but when it is, I have my earlier thoughts there for my review and expansion.

Reply
Sarah link
7/25/2016 10:59:18 am

Interesting to hear about the role of journaling in decluttering. I wonder if most diarists reread what they've written. For me, perhaps the fact that I could do so (even if I don't) frees me from that obsessive fear I'll misplace an idea if I don't think it again and again. Another way writing helps me off the squirrel cage is the expectation that each sentence will say something different from the last. My thoughts apparently have no such expectation.

Reply
Lisa
7/25/2016 11:35:55 am

Oh, sometimes when I was journaling for The Artist's Way, I would sometimes have to write, "I do not know what to write" several times before something came to me. Are you a list-maker too?

Sarah link
7/25/2016 02:21:22 pm

Lisa, yes, I make lists, and write plans, and record what happened, and fill up the page until something emerges that I want to explore.

Reply
Lisa
7/25/2016 06:38:59 pm

Me too. I imagine that is the purpose behind writing down, as opposed to merely thinking about, what you want to accomplish by tidying up. There's something about the breaking down of the thoughts into sentences, words, individual characters, even more effective if using something other than a keyboard. Back on topic, I do have a notebook my great-grandmother kept, more like a scrapbook of words, and it IS thought-provoking to consider what she thought to make a note of. A bit of humor, a date or place in her life, fleshed out by her daughter when I asked what this address or that person meant.

Reply
Sarah link
7/26/2016 08:09:23 am

Your great-grandmother's notebook sounds intriguing. Did you know her?

Lisa
7/26/2016 08:51:22 am

I met her one time when I was about 9. She lived in Idaho, far away. Her daughter, my maternal grandmother's sister, gave me a copy of the notebook when I began my family history research, and it was invaluable for dates and places. The notations were made later in her life, not at the time of the event.

Reply
Rhonda Peterson
7/28/2016 11:11:56 pm

I'm glad the kindergarteners are using pencils and paper and not iPads! I feel more personally involved when I write on paper than typing on my computer. There's certainly a difference physiologically. But since I grew up with pens and paper, I keep wondering if the children growing up expressing themselves electronically will feel more attached to that format for expressing themselves.

Reply
Sarah link
7/29/2016 08:52:15 am

I know people who journal by keyboard and swear by it. Like you, I relate more closely to what I'm writing when it's by hand. Research has shown several benefits to children at least learning to write by hand. Topic for a future blog post, perhaps?

Reply
Lisa
7/29/2016 11:44:08 am

We all grew up with typewriters. If the only way someone will journal is electronically, I still believe that's better than not journalling at all. But studies show there is a difference in the brain between forming the letters by hand directly on paper than by typing them. And it makes sense. Typing is just a repetitive tapping motion. Forming letters is more like art, no matter how good your penmanship skills!




Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    RSS Feed


      ​get updates

    Sign up
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact