Journaling As A Daily Practice

By Katriena Knights

I’ve always been skeptical about journaling. I always felt like it was a waste of time when I could be  writing “real” things, like stories or articles I could sell. But as I’ve grown older and faced new challenges, and especially as I’ve moved into a full-time freelance career, I’ve experimented again with journaling and have found it to be a useful, maybe even indispensable tool.

Like many creative types, I was reintroduced to the idea of regular journaling by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. When I first dug into this book, I did morning pages for a long time, faithfully, but finally ended up stopping because my journaling self was demanding things of me I wasn’t prepared to deal with.

As it turned out I had to make those changes, and they were big ones. After the transition into literally a new life, I turned again to morning pages to work through the flood of emotions that plagued me every day. Journaling helped gradually drain the infection that had resulted and helped me move forward. Yet I still backed away from the journaling practice, and eventually stopped again.

Later I ran across Mari’s books and website, and participated in a few of her challenges. The first one was with her Pay Yourself First journaling book. I was dealing with issues regarding finances--I had just made the jump to full-time freelancing--and the book helped me work out some attitudes and habits that were holding me back. For a while I continued to journal in this more structured format. I began to realize my journaling had developed a pattern.

Not too long ago, Mari held another challenge, this one having to do with morning pages. I jumped into them again, dutifully recording my three pages every morning. Again, I found some interesting trends emerging, and as I’ve continued with the practice over the last few months, I’ve kept with these practices, because they seem to help me get more out of my journaling without placing any real structure or demands on my journaling time.

1. Writing when I can’t see. This one is a little weird, but it’s had some surprising benefits. I do my pages first thing in the morning, like Cameron says to do, and I often leave the light off, or provide just enough so I can see the lines on the page. I also don’t put my glasses on. I’m not totally blind without them but it does make it difficult to see exactly what I’m writing. Somehow this has the effect of freeing me from my internal editor so I don’t try to structure what I write,  just write whatever comes to mind. I find myself not getting hung up as much in the individual words or on whether or not what I’m writing makes any sense.

2. Talking to myself. This might seem kind of obvious, since if you’re journaling you’re obviously talking to yourself, but it was a bit of a revelation when I realized that I did my most effective journaling when I wrote in second person, addressing myself as if I were talking to a friend. By effective in this case I mean that I saw results from the journaling exercise, whether it was a increase in productivity for the day or the easing of a defeatist mood. I try to be positive when I do this, telling myself what I’ve accomplished or what steps I need to take to solve a problem rather than berating myself for what I haven’t done, which is a bad habit of mine. I’ve found that I can see patterns in my moods more clearly and don’t spend as much time wondering why I’m down or unmotivated when, for instance, the weather is gloomy.

3. Exercises in gratitude. For a while I was keeping a separate gratitude journal, where I wrote down five things I was grateful for every night before bed. When I got back into the daily journalng practice, I found myself combining the two. I would write about things I was grateful for from the previous day, and I would also send out gratitude for things yet to come. I adopted this as a regular pattern. When I spend part of the journal discussing action items or things I need I’ll follow that up with a series of thank yous for the focus and ability to follow through with plans and with thanks for the things I need, such as steadier cash flow or a new gig to get me through a tight financial time.

4. Dream journaling. I don’t do this every day, but when I have dreams that are particularly vivid or seem to be related to things I’m struggling with, I’ll record them in my morning pages. Interpreting dreams is an entirely separate topic, and a complicated one, but even if you don’t choose to try to interpret what your subconscious is trying to tell you, you can go with your gut and just jot down whatever dreams seem significant, intense, or even amusing. Patterns might emerge eventually that can help you zero in on what the dreams mean.

As I’ve continued with my journaling practice, I’ve found myself more able to act on opportunities, less likely to beat myself up when days don’t go quite as I’d planned, and feeling better overall about decisions. I spend time supporting myself, working through my decisions, and taking time to be grateful for what I have. I feel steadier, more even, and more confident. It’s a lot to get out of three short pages scribbled down in the morning in the dark, and after two full notebooks I think I’ve become addicted to the curious feeling of peace the practice leaves behind.

BIO: Katriena Knights is the author of over thirty published novels, short stories and novellas under four pseudonyms, including Elizabeth Jewell and KC Myers. Her latest novel, As If You Never Left Me, is now available from Crimson Romance.  Katriena can also be found at her Blog at katrienaknights.blogspot.com, or on Twitter at twitter.com/crazywritinfool