Isn't this concept basically your 90's dear diary but on crack cocaine? I say on drugs because everyone that so-called journals (used as a verb) these days treats it as if it's an obsession. When someone says they journal, I always imagine this menacing, slightly psychotic twitchy look in their eyes as if they've been journaling constantly, scribbling all their fleeting thoughts rapidly, foaming at their mouths, but carrying on without food or sleep, chanting "Must. Note. Everything. Down!" Mostly because no one does anything in moderation these days. Everything has to obnoxiously explicit, in your face, grand (
go big or go bigger pysche).
To be fair, many a budding and veteran (....journalists(?) what do we call them, Journaling aficionados, ...journos? Yea let's stick to that) JOURNOS might be journaling in the right amount, a little bit scribbling here and there, and keeping it discrete, as one probably should. But the vast majority of journos decide to come out of the closet and reveal themselves as avid Journos; these are the ones I seriously dispise, almost to the point where I want to hiss at them everytime they do anything remotely journo-esque.
Journalling is basically a physical blog, like a dear diary as I said before for my darling boomers and genx readers (if any). But it can be built to have a little more structure. The vast majority of people who journal show that they use it during the first 5 and last 5 minutes of their day. The former for making lists and latter for showing what was accomplished and showing gratitude. And while it might help some, it just seems like a butt load of bolderdash. It feels like an elaborate ploy by the influencers to show they're oh so organized and methodical, that they release their floating thoughts here so they have more mental space to process the immediate, that their neverending color coded and highlighted to-do lists ensure maximum efficiency, but truth be told it's anything but this. Especially, the gratitude lists. I mean for God's sake, say a thank you out loud.
I got to thinking about this because my physician, who has taken the responsibility (I'm grateful, ignore my tone) of also being my part time therapist, seems to think this might help me manage my thoughts efficiently so I don't take those to bed with me. I chuckled, as she said it and looking at her face, which portrayed a mixture of expressions ranging from aghast to borderline offended, quickly learned that was not a joke, but a genuine suggestion.
She says, "Writing can be a form of therapy". Well not to me, someone who got dinged for bad handwriting all through primary school. Come to think of it, back then, schools put a lot of focus on arbitrary shit like handwriting and not eating or going to restrooms before breaks or tying your hair a certain way or not wearing watches or henna to school. Not so much about actual hygiene, healthy habits, mental health, bullying, all round development. Nah, but handwriting, you had to fix. Mine also did a funny little thing; to get someone to improve at something, they always started out by embarrassing the shit out of the pupil. Not words of encouragement, just diminish the person to their most insecure form and ask them to build themselves up. That works, right? So I had terrible handwriting, but I also did not really (rather still don't) have my own style. I just tried to emulate whatever I saw or got influenced by and many a times, it was my parents' scribbles. Now I'm not in anyway implying they have bad handwriting, but they had very mature styles and also at 30+ yrs of age, had no need to write or practice their artwork daily. Needless to say but important to point out, they wrote super fast but not very legibly. And I emulated, because it's a lot fancier than saying copied. And my teachers, who were forced to decipher the hieroglyphics I left, thought it necessary to insult me in front of my fellow classmates by saying, I didn't write pretty and delicate like all the girls (because your gender, apparently has a huge role to play, not just in your personality but also your handwriting) but like crow feet markings in snow (they didn't find it necessary to complete the sentence and say, like the boys). Because in India, we only diminish girls, we don't really shame the other gender (notice, singular, because the story is from 1990s). So me and 5 other boys who were also chosen for illegible scribbles, but not shamed publicly unlike me, would arrive at school an hour before the rest of the folks and practice writing neatly for an hour. We were called the "bad handwriting club", because an hour of detention and rebuke wasn't enough of gash to our self-esteem. And how did they get us to improve? By writing in our own style, 5 pages or more in an hour. There weren't any critiques or guidelines. Just come, write, and go. If the teacher saw any improvement, she'd nod. If not, she'd make no remark there, but bring it up in class in passing or make you the butt of the joke and catch you completely off guard. So asking someone who has endured hours of this hogwash to use handwriting as therapy, should be punishable. Should be, it isn't, but I'm proposing it be.
She (the doctor) continues to say "You should try journalling all your thoughts and making lists for the next morning so you leave your anxiety in the book". Leave my anxiety. My anxiety, is my siamese twin. But not the one you can separate without any casualties. It's almost necessary for my routine functioning at this point. I don't know a way without. She also explained that all anxiety is not bad, there's the white angelic one which is eustress and the bad devil one which is distress. But I belong to a different school of thought, one that thinks these are not separate. You can't have the good without having some of the bad. For example, you can't have the so called health benefits of apple cider vinegar without a little bit of damage to your enamel. Similarly you can't expect your stress to make you all accountable and efficient, without doing away with some side effects like GI issues (nausea, diarrhea), impulsive or fidgety actions, etc. And these are seemingly small prices to pay for all that machine-esque labor it gets out of you in the hour of need.
"Think about it", she says. "You can try it out and see if your symptoms get better, sleep on it", she concludes. Sleep on it. Woman, you do remember how this conversation started, right?
I answered the mental health assessment questionnaire (finally, we both agreed on me doing a pen paper assessment as opposed to an interview format which was painfully awkward for both, the doc and patient), which asked me the same set of questions again and I hesitated between, "Do I just give that away?" and "Let's downplay it a little!", before finally settling on the " Ah, fuck it, here's my brain goop, bloop!" One of the questions I have to answer is "I sleep too much, don't sleep at all, wake up a lot" (yes, that's a question, can't you tell by looking at the semantics?) and the options are "never/often/many days/several days". Even if I appreciate what they were trying to do with saving space and grouping questions of the same category, this is just a Wren and Martin nightmare. It's worse than the Starbucks cup size system which only makes sense to people who're still binge watching Kardashians in 2023.
So I chose MANY DAYS, although I fully admit, it was only because MANY came before SEVERAL in the order and not because I fully understand how they're different. And she started discussing tips on having a good quality of sleep by addressing my anxiety issues. So, even as a metaphor, "sleep on it" isn't the best thing to say to someone battling insomnia. It's, how you would say, declassé (ah, french, very nice!).
As I walked back from the clinic, my ever racing brain couldn't stop fixating on journalling. It stuck. Like that weird lyric from pathan, "Esta noche la vida es completa". Gu. Absolute gu lyric. Same as the concept of journaling (I have given up on the spelling at this point).
Tell someone with high functioning hyper anxiety and depression, that struggles with starting activities knowing too well they won't complete it out of fear of failure or imperfection, to journal is like telling a fish that it won't be judged by it's ability to climb a tree but place it next to one and stare at it judgmentally as it struggles to survive outside water next to a tree and slowly dies of asphyxiation. Ok, maybe not that dramatic but you get where I'm going. Nowhere, that's right. Because I could go out there and buy a fancy leather clad notebook with matching stationery but let's be real, I'm never even going to finish writing my name because I'll be fully aware I'm staining it with my dirtbag of a penmanship.
So what do I do, I think about it, think about it until my mind decides to run wild and I officially do need to spit it out somewhere. That somewhere is this virtual journal.
So here you go, doc. Here's me trying. Maybe not the way you or those dweebs from the interwebs approve of, but this is something eh? Yeah, well, we all can't be winners can we?
