I’m reading a lot lately…that’s a weird phrase. Lot lately! A lot lately. Huh. Anyway, been reading or seeing a lot of posts or articles lately about the power of journaling, whether it’s morning pages or brain dumps or journaling about your feelings etc etc. The message is – and I should grab some of these articles – but they’re basically screaming from the mountain tops that this is what Marcus Aurelius ( took Google about 20 minutes to load so I could figure out the spelling of that ) and Einstein and God and whoever else. Anyone that is anyone has brain dumped or journaled and implying not so subtly that this is why they’re successful.
Barf.
They’re so many barfs, I’m going to need to brain dump as to clarify where so many of them originate i.e I barf and I want to know: huh? what prompted that barf? and that one? and that one? So, there’s like 8 here, 8 barfs, and I’m barfing over different reasons as to why these types of articles – namely self help click bait – and journaling to be specific in this case – are so horrendous.
I’ve been journaling for years. Years. Decades. As a kid – maybe 8 – I was so mad at a friend I came home and instinctively wrote down on a pad of paper I hate so and so. Or something to that affect. Probably revealing more about my psyche than I should on here – and no, I didn’t grow up to hate people and he’s still a friend of mine today in our 40’s – but it lets one know, I’ve been doing this since before I can remember. It’s fine. It helps. I like it. It’ ok. I do it out of necessity more than anything. And I’m sure it’s helpful.
But let’s not over sell it. I’m not exactly king of the hill success guy over here. I might feel better. It clarifies thought, sometimes. Sometimes it just makes you feel worse. It’s not the end all be all answer.
And that’s the horrendous thing about some of these articles. They put a little too much shine on the outcome.
Write cause you want to. Just don’t expect to turn into Bill Gates or Aristotle as a result.