Depression Talk

I’ve been working online with a few different blogs for going on three years now. I really love my time on the Internet: The comments I get, the fact that friends and family can keep up on my life with the click of a mouse. I also find very therapeutic reasons to continue blogging online. I love working out my thoughts in front of me, paging through the archives and seeing where I’ve changed over the weeks and months.

I have a really, really close friend coming down for the weekend and on our last night together in her apartment (Where I spent the best six weeks of my life living as a nomad) she was paging through her paper journals, laughing at the things she wrote years ago. She wants to give her kids her journals one day, to let them know the type of person she was back then, how she became the person she one day will be.

I have to say that I felt a little bit sad about that, because it is doubtful that the pages I’ve written over the last few years will still be up on the Internet by the time my kids are ready to read their mother’s life story. (If I’m still stuck with only a cat at that point, I suppose it will all be a moot point…)

So today I went to Wal-Mart and I fell in love with a spiral journal, with lined pages that have little decorative flowers at each corner. It is a hard cover one with a beige on beige design, and with it I bought a really fancy Bic pen. (My definition of a fancy pen is one that has a push-button thingy. I’m not ready to slip into the world of hundred dollar pens just yet.)

They say that journaling is a really healthy way to work out the arguments you have with yourself, the potential arguments you may have with others. Writing down the problems you’re having can help clear your mind for a better night’s rest and you can look over them in the morning with a clearer mind and refreshed attitude.

I don’t know that I agree with all I’ve heard about journaling. I’ve never been good at it before: I sporadically jounalled through high school just for record-keeping’s sake. Beyond that, I’ve never used it for therapeutic purposes.

As it stands now, I plan to journal for record-keeping again. I want to keep my thoughts and feelings on paper so that in years to come, I can look back on what I was doing and how I was feeling in the eyar 2007. However, hopefully it will allow me to express my more intimate thoughts in a private avenue that can’t be accessed by the whole world through google.

I plan to keep the site updated with my journaling progress from time to time. If it works for me, I generally recommend it because hey! It works for me! At the same time, I also tend to recommend things that don’t work for me because hey! I’m not the only person in the world.

Does anyone here journal? Which purposes do you use it for? And has it helped in dealing with life’s issues, depression, anxiety, decision-making? Feel free to share!

Journaling, Depression, Journal, Anxiety, Life Goals, Blog, Diary