My Journey with Journaling
When you have a bad day, what will you do?
You may say that you’ll movie or listen to music or hang out with friend. For me? Yes, I‘ll also do those things, but there’s another particular thing which reassures that after doing that, my feeling will get better. And that is “Journaling”.
From childhood to high school, I never cared about my own feeling and even rejected it because the environment I grew up has taught me (in a not-so-obvious way) that I shouldn’t show my feeling and that negative feeling or thought is not good. I also never thought about writing a diary or journal, too. At that time, I thought a diary is just a book where you write about your daily life - boring stuff - and nothing else.
However, ever since I became an undergraduate student and went abroad to study medicine in Japan, I’ve been through a lot of emotions related to my studying and relationship, especially friendship (not “that” ship). Those emotion overwhelmed me and made my brain almost burst out sometimes, but I tried to conceal it. Of course, I couldn’t. So, I tried following some advices from self-help books such as “The Four Agreement” by Don Miguel Ruiz and “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie. The books were amazing themselves, but the problem was me because it was effective at first, but for some reason, my brain kind of got used to those rules and gradually but surely, ignored them. (Am I the only one like this? Someone please tell me.)
One day, thanks to a YouTube channel named “Dara Kim”, I discovered a book called “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. It was a book which inspired me to wake up early and make a morning routine so that I could find some peace in my mind. In the book, there’s a session called “(Life) SAVERS”, consisting of S=Silent (meditation), A=Affirmation, V=Visualization, E=Exercise, R=Reading, and finally, another S, which is for Script (writing or journaling). I started to follow the routine every morning. Because this is an article about journaling, I will only talk about my journey with S=Script.
I was so excited with this routine and things was smooth for “SAVER”, but for S=Script, it was a different story. When I opened my book and held a pen, starting to write, I hesitated.
What should I write about?
It wasn’t like I didn’t have anything to write, but more like I didn’t know where to start. I’ve never told anyone about my feeling. I couldn’t even open my mouth to describe it. And now? Writing it down on a paper with everlasting words and sentences? How embarrassing! I can still remember that the first time I wrote my journal, I couldn’t even write the word “I”. But finally, I surpassed my embarrassment and wrote about 4-5 sentences with my face cringed most of the time. After I finished it, I didn’t even want to read it again. (I think that paper of article has already been torn apart into pieces 🫠)
Nevertheless, I felt lighter as if the rock in my heart was finally taken out. Ever since that day, I journaled every day whether I felt happy or sad. When someone did good things to me, I wrote an appreciation journal. When there was an exam coming up, I wrote about my anxiety and worry. And of course, every time I wrote it down, I felt much better, especially when I wrote about grateful things happened in my life because it made me appreciate myself, my life and people around me even more.
But things didn’t stay the same. In the second year of the medical school I’m studying, there’s an anatomy dissection course whose examination is very, very, very difficult and strict. It forced me to give up on my morning routine, including journaling, because I wanted to make time for studying.
From that time on, the pattern of my daily life changed. I had no longer wake up early and follow my old routine. Even after the anatomy course was completed, I didn’t go back because I realized that studying at night was more effective for me than studying in the morning. I didn’t really feel guilty about the changing, but I kind of felt bad because it was a great habit which I built for about 1 year and then it was destroyed completely like this.
This continued until I became a third-year student…
In the third year, the medical students in my university have to take CBT (Computer-based Test) to evaluate their knowledge on medicine before starting the clinical clerkship in hospitals. The entire test is conducted in Japanese and consists of various subjects, ranged from the basic sciences to social medicine in Japan. Beside the ultimate test of the third year, we have to learn about variety of subject related to medical research and Japanese medical system, too. There were lot of works to do and a lot of things to learn and I became stressful and burnout. So I tried to find a way to reduce the load my brain bared. And the solution was none other than journaling. Realizing that, I started to journal again. This time, however, it’s no longer the morning journal. I write when I have a bad day or when my brain becomes fogged with negative or useless thought. Sometimes I write my appreciation toward the people around me and my hard-working self. Moreover, the journal isn’t restricted to be written every day or only 4-5 lines. I write to my heart’s content. All the emotions and thoughts I have are poured into the book. Sometimes I write until my hand hurts. That is why the first article of my new journaling book is 1 and a half page of A4-sized paper. One tip about journal, if you’re an international student like me, you can just writing in your own language in the class where everyone’s around and no one can understand what you’re writing about! 🤭
Since then, journaling has become a part of my life. When I have a bad day and can’t think of anything productive, I’ll write my problem down. Also, I don’t have any shame in putting my feeling into phrase or sentences anymore. I write what I think and what I feel in any language which comes to my mind first whether it’s Khmer, English or Japanese (sometimes emoji). Furthermore, I don’t really care about the aesthetic of the journal I write. My handwriting can be good to look at first, but sometimes it gets more and more unreadable because… it resembles my emotion which is built up over the course of writing it.
Beside the benefit on my mental stability, journaling has also paved the way for me to become who I am now. Before, I was just a medical student. My everyday life is waking up, studying, and sleeping. However, after writing journal for over a few years now, I have new ideas about writing. I started to make this blog and writing a novel (check it out here!), book reviews, and this article! Who know what future this habit can bring?
Finally, journaling changed me and my life! The more I write, the more I know about myself. The more I write, the lighter my brain is even though my idea expands. I can’t say that I know myself clearly yet. There’s a lot of things I need to learn about. But I believe that journaling will join me in this journey of finding myself!
