One of the surprising things that comes from journaling (or whatever) every day is that you can read posts from weeks or months (sometimes days) ago and not recall writing a single word of what you’re reading.
Whenever this happens (i.e. almost every time that I read an old entry) I wonder what I must have been thinking, feeling, or doing that day to make me write what I had. I think of it as getting to know myself.
Sometimes, I’ll learn something new about myself—often because of just how much I’ve written about something. I might have written for months about something I wanted to do (and often hadn’t). It could also be something that I enjoyed, found funny, or was worried about.
It feels a little bit weird, to be honest.
It can also feel kind of cool though.
I enjoy writing morning pages for the act of writing them. The act of doing it that day specifically. Increasingly, I think about the idea that I’m writing for future me, who might be a totally different person. I’m helping to teach future me about what they might like (or not like anymore).
I hadn’t really thought about this part of journaling. In fact, I’d toyed with the idea of deleting each entry as soon as I’d written it. I still think about doing that, but the thought is a little bit harder these days.
If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to write something down every day. It doesn’t have to be long. It could be a thought, an idea, or how you’re feeling. A few weeks from now, it might teach you something.