When I was younger, I went through notebooks like candy. The notebooks began with the artwork of 5-year-old me that I thought deserved to be framed in a museum (but truly was a stick figure on a boat) and then transitioned to me filling the pages of various notebooks with ridiculous dreams that I had, how my sister made me mad, and how my best friend "betrayed me" by sitting by the new girl instead of me. Of course, now these journals are piled in the darkest corner of my closet and a few probably ended up in a landfill. Since then, I have filled many a journal, but only in this past year did I start scrolling through the Tumblr journaling tag (a dangerous place for those of us that have very little artistic skill) and realize that there is so much more to journaling than scribbling down my thoughts.
1. A journal is a scrapbook to look back on for years to come.
Remember the scrapbooks that your mother or grandmother made in the earlier years of your life, filled with pictures of your family and your dog and all of your family adventures that tapered off when you got closer to middle school-aged?
This is my favorite part of journaling. By taking bits of things that I did that day (maybe a ticket stub, a receipt from the UC, or a picture that you took with friends between classes) and gluing them into the pages alongside a caption and an entry about what I was doing when that happened. When I'm having a bad day, I can flip back to the letter that I glued in from my friend at a different university or the name tag from a meeting where I met some really great friends.
2. A journal is a safe place to rant and cry about your feelings.
Like the above mentioned cringe-worthy diaries of my middle school years, I still have three-page long rants about people in the journals from my college time. Especially for the introverts and the people who are scared that they will offend someone by a emotion-filled rant about the girl down the hall, this is a safe place to get out all of your frustrations so that your emotions don't end up all bottled up inside.
3. A journal is a place to be creative.
I can hear you through the screen, sighing and saying you're not artistic, that you'll never be able to do what some people can do with their journals. But those people got there by practicing, but messing up and drawing more than their fair share of stick figures before they were able to draw 3-D figures on paper. Trust me.
When I say creative, I don't necessarily mean art, though if you want to draw in your journal--more power to you! When I say creative, I mean, imagining different ways to put things into words. This could be a bulleted to-do list of things that are supposed to be done that day, a post-it note from your used textbook that led to a philosophical thought about life, or a poem that you wrote and wouldn't want anyone to ever read.
4. A journal is a place to learn about yourself.
This is an amazing opportunity for self-reflection. Learn more about yourself, who you are apart from your friends, who you are when you're huddled up in your dorm to hide from the world and all the responsibilities that come with it. Writing about hopes and dreams makes them seem real and manageable. Writing about fears and stresses makes them seem valid but conquerable.
5. A journal is a place to be you, vulnerable and open.
Be you, unapologetically you. The journal won't judge you for being terrible at calligraphy or being the world's worst speller. It's a place to say that you failed a test, and that you're determined to do better next time. It's a place where you can write things you would never tell anybody. It's a place to be you.
