7 reasons to write a journal

Writing a daily personal journal is a procedure to express and record our thoughts for ourselves.

It is not easy to journal consistently

My earliest surviving journal entry from 2017 attests to this difficulty in a rather stark manner:

[2017-09-23 Sat]

diary?

3rd attempt to start a daily diary.

grievances:
- fucking nothing happening on my own startup
-

whatever

My journaling journey is a story of six failed starts, three or more changes in tooling, and finally resulting in one year of being somewhat consistent.

Why do I persist, and how is journaling useful?

1. Get therapy for free. I was living in a world of avoidance. This was not clear to me initially, but as I started opening up to my thoughts in secret (as I do not share my personal entries with others), it became amply clear to me that I was not living my life as to what really gives me joy.
2. Communicate better. Writing consistently improved my expressive ability, vocabulary, and grammar automatically. I think I can connect better with people, get my point across with ease, and find middle ground in disagreements faster more than before.
3. Record memories. This is obvious, but worth mentioning. My daily entries on vacations allow me to relive those moments. Prior to this, my record of vacations were photographs and videos. Having a daily journal also records emotions such as anticipation, wonder, joy, disappointment, disagreements, and nervousness. It is having a 3D recall instead of 2D.
4. Build better habits. Journaling allows one to nag yourself. I get annoyed when someone else nags me, but I can only get frustrated at myself when I am the one missing out on improvements I need to do. Additionally, if a habit is not sticking, I try switching how I am approaching it to see if it sticks.
5. Heal pain and get over anger. Jotting down thoughts gets me to express where I felt wronged, and tempers down my frustrations with other people. It allows me to think slowly, and many times I see situations better illuminated.
6. Identify shortcomings and improve on them. I realized how bad I was at following up on initiatives (I still am not the best). Journaling * TODO's and closing them out when they are done is both satisfying and helping me improve.
7. Clarify values and connect with people. I have become clearer on activities, interactions, and experiences that give me energy and vitality. I now cherish, connect, and appreciate people around me better.

How did I compile this information?

As mentioned previously, I journal on my mac using git, emacs, and org-mode. My git repository is backed up to a private raspberry pi powered server.

I migrated all prior google docs entries to org-mode journal files. I did not migrate information from google sheets, and manually counted my weekly review entries.

Counting entries for org files is straightforward, as an entry in the journal file has a standard heading: * [2023-01-02 Mon].

for i in 17 18 19 20 21- 22-
do
  grep '^* \[' journal-${i}* | wc -l
done