a little over a year ago, a friend, T, challenged me to start journalling on paper. so on august 1st 2023, i began my commitment to journal, everyday, on paper for at least two weeks.
two weeks felt like just enough time for a good sprint. a good assessment on whether this could be "right" for me. so long as i actually take it seriously which means to take no shortcuts.
before starting, i layed out some ground rules for my journaling practice:
write entries right before bed
include the date
give each entry a title
spend at least 10 minutes
assign a percentage 0-100% to rate how i thought the day went
this simple system was partly inspired by T. i borrowed the ideas of titling entries and assigning percentages, thinking they would help me recall memories more easily. to be completely honest, i didn't really have any reasons to undergo this challenge. i just thought it would be cool.
The first two weeks (August)
T told me that the first two weeks would be the hardest. this couldn’t be more true. i struggled because:
i was very forgetful
my efforts felt too forced (it didn't feel very natural to write at first)
it was uncomfortable "seeing" my emotions on paper
but after the two weeks it ended up feeling much more natural. there really wasn't any magic or special procedure. i guess i trusted the process and somehow it worked out. and i guess i wanted to keep on going because i overcame that friction. something felt right about doing that.
The next two weeks after (August)
i don't think my assigned percentages for each day made much sense during the first two weeks. but i guess stochastic gradient descent did its thing and stabilized during this period. so i was able to give more meaning to my percentages because i've felt and labelled previous days. i came up with this:
80% + is a great day (i rarely experience this but its used for days where i can events having a direct impact on changing my trajectory, positively)
70-80% is a good day (i.e. maybe completed an important part of a project, or good news from a cold outreach?)
60-70% is an average day (accomplished all my todos (or attempted) but didn't go beyond + socialize)
50% is a bad day (missed out on todos)
<50% (something affects me personally, negatively + can directly see how it changes my trajectory)
^^ (and i stuck with this system for the full year)
however just as how systems constrain solution spaces for algorithms, i wonder whether rating my days with percentages might be limiting my ability to find resolution after difficult experiences. maybe this numerical assessment is inadvertently boxing in my emotions. still need to think about this…
September to December
i started school at about this time. my first year of university. my first semester. journalling definitely helped to unweave the days since i was following a repetitive schedule. and during this time i wrote a lot about how i didn't want to lose sight of my north stars through university.
this was a very common theme during these four months. i'd like to think that journaling served as a good daily reminder. but on the flip side, i could have missed out on crucial character development from focusing too much on building side projects instead of attending school socials and making friends outside of engineering.
by the end of november, i finally filled up my first journal! this was very exciting because i rarely saw things to completion. so filling this notebook up gave me a lot of self-confidence that i could do it again — and for other things too.
also, my memory became increasingly fuzzy during exam seasons. but i also found an observation: in that my journal entries resembled lists which detailed things i did during the day, in sequential order. and so from this, in an effort to cure my foggy memory, i developed a new strategy:
avoid writing about my day in chronological order and instead what comes to mind first
write about how i feel about my experiences throughout the day instead of listing them
implementing these changes was literally night and day. i think it took me a little under a month to realize the benefits? but every now and then i was still guilty of writing lazy journal entries.
January to February
from january to the end of february i noticed a pretty significant decline in my percentages. i might edit this piece and add in a graph later. but i think my days were about 10% lower on average than in the previous semester.
reasons:
ended a relationship
wasn't working on anything else other than schoolwork
socialized very little
wasn't eating well
looking back, these two months felt extremely hazy. and i didn't really feel interested in anything. in an effort, i wrote a lot about figuring out how to rekindle my childlike wonder.
i also abandoned all of my side projects during this time. they didn't interest me anymore. so instead, i focused on
fixing my sleep schedule (at least 7hrs of sleep a day)
reducing my caffeine consumption
by reading week, the end of february, i spent a lot of time socializing — recuperating for what i didn't do during these two months. i also picked up the piano (relearning)! something which wasn't forced and i guess i could say "i just woke up one day and felt like doing it."
i also started getting in touch with my friends outside of university more often. listening to their stories reminded me of how much i missed the process of creation.
looking back on my earlier journal entries during this period, my writing was laced with cope. its even more interesting looking at the language i'd use to describe negative emotions. i.e. instead of writing about something i'd usually feel sad about, i'd write about how it angered me.
however towards the third quarter of this period, i began to write about physiological responses like chest pangs or a stiffening of the throat whenever i was put in uncomfortable situations. in retrospect, noticing this in my writing was powerful in the sense that it served as a stepping stone to help me label feelings of sadness.
March to April
these were my happiest months during my first year of university. i finally learned how to live a bit more. i visited friends, skipped more classes, studied less, slept more, and made more time to tinker on small little projects.
i think i was able to experience this because i stopped caring about my gpa. and my frustration with what i was learning in my classes reached its limit.
i continued to play piano a lot more. previously i only played whenever i finished certain psets. but during this period i played whenever i felt like it. i saw it as a way to train my gut feeling. i hypothesized in order to successfully do this, i must fully surrender to a calling. or in other words, to fully scratch an itch while letting nothing else get in the way of the process.
my days here on average were up another 10% compared to january and february. also at this time, T gave me a suggestion to write my entries with a hook. i think this also helped make march and april feel more memorable. i'd like to think whatever i did during these two months foreshadowed what happened in the next few.
May
my journals were particularly lengthy here. i spent around 30-45 minutes writing each entry. but more importantly, i finally had the freedom to do whatever i wanted to for four months.
i spent three quarters of may at home in toronto and a week in halifax to visit a friend and explore religious sites. i also experimented with some psychedelics (on which tbh this deserves its own piece someday) but i spent most of this month trying to unpack a lot of emotions which i repressed throughout the school year. journalling definitely helped me lay all these feelings out and organize them into buckets.
i also developed a pretty bad habit of writing my journal entries the morning after because i messed up my sleep schedule. but it slowly returned back to normal once i started tinkering around again.
June to August
i spent these three months mostly in san francisco, with the exception of two weeks back in toronto. i attended many gatherings, made a lot of new friends, became a better cook, fell in love with music again through singing, and completed a personal project.
at the time of writing this on august 28th 2024, i have just three double sided pages left to write on. i'll need to buy a new journal soon.
this year felt slower than the previous. i'm happy it did. its interesting because i usually feel like the years speed up as i age. i'd like to think journalling helped me slow down time. and the best part about this journal is that it really helps me realize there's no rush for anything.
seeing this entire book filled up makes me feel really good. i've grown to appreciate it more and more over time like a fine wine. i find it crazy to think how i only had the intention to journal for two weeks, but it led to so many self-discoveries. its even crazier to think how now i can barely go to sleep without writing an entry. i guess i can confidently say that i've built a habit.
cheers,
evan