A Look into My Journals
Published on 00 October 2025
What is a journal?
"to write what you have done each day, sometimes including your private thoughts, feelings, and goals" - Cambridge Dictionary
My journals in particular are just a bunch of books that I write in to keep my thoughts organized. I am a person who has such disorganized and messy thoughts and sometimes I'd like to keep it somewhere I could read back on before forgetting it again.
Diary : personal records of self-analysis
This is the first book out of all the books I have. It started as a way for me to prevent myself from gaslighting myself - invalidating my feelings because why would I feel like that? Nobody cares; is what I always tell myself.
This book has been with me for around four years now and it holds a special place in my heart despite how painful it can be to read through the entries all over again. I've started to write in a much more analytical and constructive way in the book recently as I've learned to present points and examples in a better way for my future self to understand.
I'm quite hesitant to refer to it as a diary but in reality, it fulfills all what a diary truly is. Still, I would like to also consider it as my self-analytical journal where I write to find out why I am feeling a certain why, where did I learn to have a certain way of thinking and what influenced me to feel like that. And from this experience, I'll say that I have learned a few things about myself.
Planner
This is a rougher one, it's not a pretty planner and instead more like me brain dumping whatever ideas I have on my mind for future activities. Ideas for my novels are written here, long-term plans for a healthy life is here, study plans are here, project plans are also in here. It's everything, really. I don't write much information in this book because I can instead refer to my commonplace book or my other books.
Commonplace Book
This isn't actually a fully commonplace book, I write some of my own personal ideas in here too but not a lot. My grandma's recipes are in here and I sometimes write down quotes that leave an impression on me. Other than that, I'm also starting to practice mindful consumption where I'll take notes from youtube videos and place it in the commonplace book. It's rough, it's short and it's amazing. I'm finally giving things that inspires and shapes me as a person in a place that I can return to when I need to.
Also, it's really useful for when you're trying to find something that you can't seem to remember where it's from. Like quotes! There are lots of quotes that have influenced me but sometimes, I just seriously can't remember its source. So by keeping this book, I can at least find where it came from and who wrote it.