What’s the best way to start journaling? Is there an ideal time of
day? How long should it take?
Who cares?
How you journal is much less important than why you are doing
it: To get something off your chest. To have quiet time with your
thoughts. To clarify those thoughts. To separate the harmful from the
insightful.
There’s no right way or wrong way. The point is just to do it.
If you’ve started before and stopped, start again. Getting out of
the rhythm happens. The key is to carve out the space again, today.
The French painter Eugène Delacroix—who called Stoicism his
consoling religion—struggled as we struggle:
I am taking up my Journal again after a long break. I think
it may be a way of calming this nervous excitement that
has been worrying me for so long.Yes!
That is what journaling is about. It’s spiritual windshield wipers,
as the writer Julia Cameron once put it. It’s a few minutes of
reflection that both demands and creates stillness. It’s a break from
the world. A framework for the day ahead. A coping mechanism for
troubles of the hours just past. A revving up of your creative juices,
for relaxing and clearing.
Once, twice, three times a day. Whatever. Find what works for
you.
Just know that it may turn out to be the most important thing you
do all day.