Bluntness time, I have terrible handwriting. Perhaps as an IT person it isn’t unexpected but my penmanship would make a doctor look like a master scribe. Yet there is some solace in the act of taking pen to paper and feeling thoughts go into print.
It isn’t all positive though as I’ve found with my own return to journaling. While it’s good to be able to look back on my thoughts, with my depression and anxiety at times I feel like I am caught in a constant loop. The same themes resonate daily and after a while I feel like I’ve wasted paper on the effort. I realize that part of it can be a product release of pressure or sometimes just being able to self-reflect upon things I need to change. Other times it feels like I’m circling the drain on the same things over and over again. Progress through mental health matters is not a simple flip of a switch, that I’m aware of, but some of the set backs do get frustrating, especially when I can see them visualized both in the content and the structure of my handwriting.
If you find yourself in a similar quandary, try adjusting your cadence so that you aren’t doing a daily journal but something every other day. Give yourself a break. Though still a work in progress I find myself altering the days I journal and trying to focus on what I have accomplished and what I want to accomplish. It’s that later half which has been the most challenging. Pattern wise it’s all to easy to focus on ruminating about the day or the past, it’s much harder for me to frame the future. Work at it I must though and I hope that any readers facing the same challenge are able to find something that works.
