How I Started Journaling When I Didn’t Even Know How To Write

Yes, you read it right. I have been journaling since even before I knew how to write and shape words from letters.

I have said over and over again how I have been practising gratitude journaling since 2015 which was also the first kind of journal practice I took up.

But, what I didn’t realise until now is that I have been journaling since childhood. Though it wasn’t a particular kind of journaling, random scribblings and venting on paper in any form—words, doodles, art, indecipherable scribbles—it all is also a kind of journaling itself.

I have been a die-hard (sorry for the cliché but it’s true) lover of pen and notebooks. They entice and mesmerise my soul. I don’t know why. I never knew why... until I became a poet and writing became my identity.

God doesn’t instil a passion for something inside you for no reason. He has a reason behind everything. God knew my love for paper and pen would lead me to where God wanted to lead me.

Anyway, you know you have been journaling since school days too. Remember doodling on the back of your notebooks? Or keeping a rough notebook in school, only to fill it with random things? You were journaling too while you thought you were killing the time with pen and paper.

Journaling can never be done the wrong way because there’s no right way to do it. There is just one way to journal and that is YOUR WAY.

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”–Pablo Picasso 

The back of your notebook (let’s call it your school days journal) is where you explore and discover your talents. You scribble about what fills your heart with joy. That’s the thing always on your mind. That’s what you pour on paper when you don’t have anything else to do.

Whether you draw, doodle, write, paint, or even scribble random lines and shapes on paper... a journal is a space where you are yourself, where you mindlessly or mindfully pour yourself on paper in any form that feels comfortable to you.

While mindless journaling can help you unburden your heart and mind, mindful journaling can transform your life.

"I only regret that everybody wants to deprive me of the journal, which is the only steadfast friend I have, the only one which makes my life bearable, because my happiness with human beings is so precarious, my confiding moods rare, and the least sign of non-interest is enough to silence me. In the journal, I am at ease." –Anais Nin

I had been mindlessly journaling until I started writing a gratitude journal in 2015 and this mindful journal practice gradually changed my life for good.

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You may read more of my posts related to journaling on: Journals

If you love journaling but don't know where to start, my book of Infinite Writing Prompts may help you begin your journey: https://www.shilpagoel.com/p/the-book-of-infinite-writing-prompts.html