Journaling: Crossing an Ocean Takes a Ship's Log

Some things are strange this way: while you're doing them, they feel utterly unremarkable, but when you look back after enough time has passed, they move you in ways you can't explain. For me, keeping a journal is exactly that kind of thing.

I used to think journaling was an insufferably precious habit. There was nothing in daily life worth writing down — so why would anyone need a journal? To the me of those days, most days were flat; life lifted only in the moments you hoisted a sail and went somewhere, then settled back to level. I felt that only those set-sail moments deserved recording, and that all the flat days were identical anyway. Besides, if you really wanted a record, this era has photos and video — quick and convenient. Why bother with words?

In my third year of college I had too much on my plate and seemed incapable of managing any of it; I was one whole bundle of anxiety. Under that pressure, I clicked open a course series on time management on Bilibili. It was built more or less on GTD, and I studied it in complete earnest — my notes from those ten lessons are still lying in my Evernote. That was also my first encounter with digital note-taking software. The course talked about the importance of reviews and plans, of checking in on your goals every day, that sort of thing. And so, for a stretch, I kept a daily journal.

Of course I later tossed everything I'd learned to the back of my mind, but those daily entries stayed behind in the digital notebook. Later still, whenever some thought occurred to me, I'd jot a line here and a line there, two or three times a month, and it all slowly turned into a dull running log of days. I couldn't have told you why I kept at it — after that course it felt vaguely useful, though honestly it also seemed to do nothing at all.

But one day, on a whim, I went back and reread those scattered fragments — and suddenly I felt their pull. They showed me a linear me. They told me which small joys had once happened and which hardships; what new things I had tried; what I had started and never carried forward; how much kindness I had been shown... Most of it I had completely forgotten. Reading my journal, I was meeting my past self.

Now I find journaling impossibly romantic. Even in a paper heap of trivial odds and ends, there is no shortage of small lightning. These days I write first thing after getting up: what happened yesterday, my opinions and wandering thoughts, what I want to do today. When I feel like talking, I write more; when I don't, I write less.

In the course of all this recording, I discovered another pleasure: here, you may say absolutely anything. Whatever comes to mind goes straight onto the page. What a good listener a journal is — it takes in every word. When you want to think, it guides you; when you want to rant, it rages through the storm right beside you.

Lately, though, even the journal can't quite satisfy me — it's something done at a fixed time of day, and that isn't flexible enough. So it now has a little sidekick, dedicated to catching what I feel and think in a given instant of the day: a WeChat Moments feed, on an alt account. At first I'd opened a group chat with only myself in it and kept my records there, but that had three flaws. One: chat windows multiply, and even with mine pinned, I'd get drawn off into other conversations and forget what I'd come to do. Two: the records are fragile — delete the group by accident and everything is gone. Three: it's miserable to read back. An alt account posting to Moments, I've found, is best — post whatever, whenever; and now that WeChat's desktop app can post to Moments too, it's more convenient than ever.

It isn't elegant, but this is how I record my thoughts now. The entries may be incoherent, but every word in that journal reflects my truest feeling at the moment of writing. It is my way of confiding in myself and of commemorating myself; it lets me stand shoulder to shoulder with my past self, looking toward the future.

My memory is poor, and I have no intention of forgetting the person I used to be. Standing here in the present, I'd like to say one thing to the past me: keeping a journal may indeed be a precious, self-indulgent thing — but it suits you. Life really is flat most of the time. Yet even if you keep living in the same physical world, your inner world will be different every single time you look.

At the start of the coming year, while the fireworks bloom outside the window, I hope to spend one whole evening reading myself.