Personal Journals
Mark Brown
June 16, 2022
I’ve never written in a personal journal so this might off as a little self serving to write about this. However, I do write for public consumption so there is a level of “personal” to it. There are definitely benefits for writing for personal use. While it is definitely a possibility personal journals can be found by others or eventually publicized, they are primarily for the person who wrote it. I’ve already written about training logs, which is one form of personal writing, and there are apps out there for eating logs, which also counts as personal journaling in a way. There is definitely an emotional component to it. I’ve heard many people follow the rule of waiting til the morning to send an angry e-mail that they have typed out the night before to make sure they are still mad enough to send it. Journals can serve the same purpose. There’s also a logical reason. Our memories are unreliable, so writing something down might help jog the memory of a specific feeling. This is especially true if one has legitimate medical reasons for memory loss. I will take a look at each of these in this essay, some in greater length than others.
Personal journals are meant for the person who wrote them. I know that sounds too obvious to actually write but it really needs to be understood. People who are completely truthful with everyone around them is a rarity. A needle in a 5 acre farm’s worth of hay bales kind of rarity. First, that is because conversations between two or more people are hardly ever complete. There’s always meat left on the bone. What is left unsaid is prime material for a personal journal, especially if it is emotionally driven. Just putting the thought on paper can be enough to get it out of the writer’s head. That exact reason is why I have this blog. We are very good at trapping thoughts in our head and letting them destroy us from within. Second, volunteering information about how one feels fully in a conversation out of order or turn has negative consequences, especially if said information makes others uncomfortable in any of the ways that takes form. Sometimes it’s just best to leave it in a personal journal to maintain relationships or jobs. There may be a time to bring up the contents of some journals up in conversation or may not. At least it isn’t sitting around in the writer’s head collecting rent.
The last reason is the part of the movie that turns on a character finding another’s journal and changes the direction of their relationship, for good or bad. I’ve seen far too many movies where people used the information within someone’s personal journal to alter their behavior. Knowledge is a powerful thing. When the person who wrote the journal finds out, they get angry because their personal space has been invaded. How it plays out depends on what act the movie is in and what kind of movie it is. Personal journals should be treated as intellectual property. Any information gotten from these journals should be read in the writer’s voice. Anything on the page is written for their use. Yes, there are circumstances where information in the pages is necessary for public use: Criminal investigations, potential acts of violence that haven’t yet happened, etc. However, that doesn’t grant anyone an expectation to just read them without clearance from the writer. The best way to keep on top of potential volatile situations is to discuss them openly and by removing as much emotion from it as possible. I know that can be quite difficult. I know I said it above but it’s worth repeating… We’re also really good at intentionally hiding thoughts and letting them destroy us from within.
A personal journal is the ultimate version of waiting to the following morning to send the angry e-mail strategy. I’m reasonably sure that has saved millions of jobs around the world. I know the real life version of that has saved mine more than a few times. Ideally, the act of writing in the journal takes the emotional steam out of the words entirely. That leaves the writer able to move on from them. In my experience, a slight residue of the emotions in the journal is left in the writer. One variant of this ideal is the 24 Hour or “Overnight” rules I have heard from various places. I first heard about them on A Football Life about Marty Schottenheimer. The house rule is that everyone could be upset by the loss for 24 or overnight hours then everyone had to let it go. I have heard it in a few other shows focusing on athletes since then. This is what writing in the journal is supposed to do. Emotions, especially intense ones, often cloud decision making by making logical decisions sound less so while making other less logical decisions sound more so. The air needs to be cleared to make sure that doesn’t happen. If one can talk about it freely with another person, that’s probably more ideal but a persona journal can fill the void in the absence of that. Remember, decisions always have consequences. It’s in someone’s best interest to be able to anticipate what most of them will be. Being emotionally present aids that process immensely.
Sometimes a personal journal is just the launching point for deeper development of a thought in someone’s head. I do this on a smaller scale. Ideas for blogs come into my brain and the only thing I can do about them is to talk them through aloud or silently because I’m at work, lifting, driving or whatnot. Driving home from the movie theatre is when my “Realizations of Success” post came to be. I was able to get right to my laptop when I got home and get my thoughts down. Most of the time I can only type the idea out in my phone as a reminder for the future. This essay is one of those ideas. However, a personal journal could very well serve the same purpose, especially if the writer stumbles upon something that could be profitable for them and wants to keep it from view until the time is right. This is not to say someone is always stashing a movie script in a personal journal but it’s possible. I know I said this up above but it is bears repeating. The writer, and any potential reader, of any personal journal should consider it intellectual property and protect it as needed.
This all stems from the fact that most people’s memories are pretty faulty with some or all aspects of memory. Who did what when, where, why and how they did it are all details that get messed up regularly. Case studies tell us this all the time. I remember one of my professors at Drake use an example of one such case study to illustrate this. He was teaching a class called Communication Theory he shared that a case study was one in which a white man robbed a black man. By the tenth time viewing it, those doing the case study were convinced the black man was robbing the white man. I remember that being eye opening at the time just how little it takes to mess with people’s memories. So, if a person wants to remember something specific for future use a personal journal is the exact place to put it. Yes, I consider a word document about one specific topic to be a personal journal. This essay is a personal journal entry until it gets published on the blog. It becomes something else after that. Putting all the details involving the entry allows the writer to come back to it right where they left off emotionally, physically and mentally. That’s an important step because it will help develop writing skills over time. Not every little bit of work needs to be seen by other people.
The level of specificity is an important detail to follow because tracking all of that is important for self study. At some point, doing a self review needs to happen. Athletes and coaches call this self scouting. They use to see if they or others on the team are tipping plays to the opponent through specific behaviors that coincide with specific actions. As G.I. Joe said, knowing is half the battle. Being specific is what personal training or eating logs is all about. I won’t blather on about either of those logs too long because I have already done that (Training Logs – May 26, 2022). I see training and eating logs as the exact same thing so what I say for one, goes for the other. However, I will repeat what I said earlier above and on the Training Logs post. Personal journals and logs are primarily for the person making them. If others find them and get something out from the information alone, that’s extremely secondary unless a coach/professional help needs to see them. Serious lifters or people who are serious about their health don’t just quit after 2-3 years. It becomes a part of their life, possibly even a driving force. Taking detailed logs is the only way to keep all of that information accurate. It also becomes an informal medical record of the lifter. The same thing goes for personal journals.
Personal journaling should be done with one person in mind: The writer. They help relieve the build up of emotional stress to a degree, hopefully a big one. Being as descriptive and detailed as possible helps someone remember the feeling that aided in writing the words if that becomes necessary. Journals are also good spots to hide potential pet projects until the time comes to make them public. They also serve the job of improving reading and writing skills. Those two things will always be valuable to improve, even in an audio and video driven world. Lastly, they are the spot for logging activities that no one but the writer ever needs to know about and eventually look back on. Publishing content has its own benefits but you’ll just have to wait till I put that essay out.
Life Through Lifting 