Joys of Journalling, Writing and Everything In Between
“The unexamined life is not worth living” - Socrates
My first two blog entries followed a similar format: take a topic and explore its evolution from childhood to adulthood. While the format is painfully derivative, I find reflecting and writing about my reflections enriching. While I reflect on different mediums, from meditations to journalling, I find this platform special because I have hesitated to blog for a long time. It is because I was constantly clueless about what to write about. It was a confluence of being fearful of others’ judgments, having a limited worldview, and a lack of excitement towards life. I have had an ambivalent relationship with blogging.
Furthermore, my early entries in journalling were made during my fifth and sixth grades when a friend gifted me a diary. As resources were scarce for journalling, I lacked motivation and was jaded through my initial journals. Some of my early journalling was hilariously atrocious as they were a cold summarization of my day with no personable insights. Gradually, my urge to journal deteriorated as it became tiring over time. While my journalling habit was in hibernation for a long time, a bug caught me earlier in life - the writing bug.
I first caught the writing bug a couple of years before journalling. One fine Tuesday, during a break period at school, I saw my friend writing diligently, which caught my eye. When asked, he said he was working on a book about a treasure hunt. As absurd as it sounds in retrospect, the idea of a 10-year-old writing a novel intrigued me, and I began aimlessly scribbling in my notebook. Unlike most passions, my admiration for writing has been sporadic for over a decade. One of the many manifestations that this bug has had was through journaling. Besides journaling, other forms of my writing bug have been during a brief period in my sophomore year of high school, where I ended up starting a blog. Sadly, it was reduced to BuzzFeed-esque listicles and, like journalling, fizzled out in no time. Besides the blog, I was always captivated to experiment with academic writing, but some of the results have been appalling as they affected my grades.
Between my failed blog and this emerging newsletter, a crucial phase shaped my approach toward writing and its varying manifestations. During my latter years of high school, I was a part of my high school’s newspaper team. In addition to rising the ranks from a staff reporter to the editor-in-chief, I was exposed to everything I desired from writing - resonating responses, impactful storytelling, and exciting assignments. Every writing challenge felt more exciting than the last. A major highlight of my journalism journey has been a part of the Stanford Daily team for a summer program where I worked closely under higher stakes than high school and got to publish articles at a collegiate organization. With my stint at Stanford and the opportunity to write an eclectic range of articles over two years, my storytelling aspirations felt more defined than ever.
I was never interested in a career in journalism due to financial instability and the lack of freedom in the press. While school journalism is bound to the organization, there is more opportunity to experiment and stay true to your voice since the stakes and low funding are consistent. I did have my attempts at writing at college, but they were not as fulfilling as in high school. As stated before, my view towards life has been very mechanical during college, and for writing, that view does not contribute to my pursuit of it. In addition to these factors, I was not a very voracious reader. Hence, I was not keen to write regularly.
As a result, a habit I wanted to foster in 2024 was to get back to journaling. This was due to the influx of thoughts that consumed me as I was on the verge of self-improvement. Unlike the last attempt, the journal aimed to write semi-soliloquies, which would help me better understand myself. The journal has had an interesting evolution in the year. While it seemed to have depleted most of my interests, it made a comeback later in the year, like an abandoned child finding their parents. A crucial difference was that I returned with a much purer approach to journaling and self-reflection.
A significant contributing factor to acquiring this approach was my reading impulses, which made an unexpected comeback. What started as just another activity blossomed into something more beautiful as some of my more fragmented opinions on topics such as happiness and peace became more defined as I had time to reflect upon them. With this newfound realization, I began to get back to journaling. Meditation is another habit that enhanced my journalling, which gave me clearer thoughts and a more tranquil attitude toward reflecting on myself.
As my journalling commenced at a smoother pace, a veil of inadequacy lurked on my mind. While I was consistent in my journal entries, I felt there was so much to write and reflect about that was beyond my daily journal. My habit of journalling extended from a night journal to a meditation journal - to journal my immediate thoughts after meditating, a commonplace book - a one-stop book to journal that acts as a knowledge base to my many intellectual odysseys and a gratitude journal. Fun fact on the latter: the gratitude journal began as a rage journal, but somewhere, as my anger wasn’t as long-lasting, I decided to rephrase it as a gratitude journal cause it is the emotion I end up feeling in the long run.
Over the last decade, my love for writing has gone through many phases, and one constant thing through these frustrating phases has been my hunger to tell stories, reflect on my environment, and eventually express myself. While the future of a writing career remains uncertain, a certainty is that it will continue to be a seminal part of my life - whether it is writing for an audience or myself.