For as long as I can remember, I have identified as a writer. I viewed it as a tool for achievement, from writing to gain entry into college, for essay contests on topics ranging from the Electoral College to ethnic representation in the insurance agency, and now weekly columns in the Villanovan. What I failed to realize throughout the years I used writing as a means to a rewarded end was the true power that it harnessed: to become the manifest of a never-ending stream of thoughts.
This form of writing, often referred to as journaling, is one we often hear we should begin to do but find ourselves delaying to do instead. In a sea of mandatory writing commitments we face throughout our academic and professional lives, the idea of sitting down with pen and paper in an attempt to clarify our confusing, innermost thoughts appears extremely daunting to most. However, having now actively journaled for more than three years, I serve as a testament to the power of journaling – and, how it was the one act that I believe truly solidified my identity as a writer.
I began my first journal during my senior year of high school, with a letter to my future self. Reading it back now, as the intended audience, I deduced it was rather shallow. The text read as though I were almost too afraid to try and clarify what in my mind seemed to be unclassifiable. With journaling, there is no “playing it safe. Why would we do so when there’s no audience to perform for and approval to aspire to?
Once I began journaling authentically, without fear of objectively “succeeding” at it, I learned two very important things about human thoughts. First, they rarely make sense when written down. Second, they don’t have to.
I cannot count the amount of times I have gone into a journal session with a plethora of what (at the time) seemed to be intense emotions – stress, sadness, anger, you name it. Once I wrote down how I felt on paper, the clarity gained was immediately evident. We become so trapped in our own heads with due dates, relationships, time commitments and other entities that we allow them to become a cumulative ball of feeling, and often it takes a pen and paper to detangle that same proverbial “ball of feeling.”
My current journaling routine is simple: I wake up every morning and allow myself to write about whatever I desire, as long as it takes up a minimum of one page. Some days, it’s a compilation of various song lyrics. Other days, it’s a gratitude list, and other days, it’s whatever the opposite of a gratitude list. (Which is okay, because there is no feasible way to appropriate a personal journal. It’d be rather antithetical to the whole process, anyway.)
Very few activities in our lives are done for the sake of simply doing something for causa, which is a reference to the Latin phrase “for the mere sake of.” We attend this university to achieve a degree so we can work for someone else; we go to the gym so we get positive feedback from our doctor at our annual appointment; we write essays because it is mandatory for a class. The greatest indication of a true writer is someone who is passionate for it. No other prerequisite is relevant. What could be more evident of a genuine love for writing than the act of voluntarily choosing it, day-in and day-out, with no reinforcement from outside influence? Become a writer, pick up your journal, and write whatever demands to be written. After all, the only way to gain identity as such is through deliberate, unrestricted choice.
