Train of Thought

I had a really hard time deciding what my blog should be about. I considered several different topics that had significance to me, but soon realized that I had already written about all of them on different occasions. I thought and thought about something new I could write about. Then my eyes stumbled upon the journal on my desk.

I journal every day, or at least try to. If something interesting happens during my day, I’ll write it down, but the bulk of my journal’s content is about things I’ve been thinking about. I tend to think about random things for long periods of time. I’ll see or hear something and it’ll trigger a long train of thought that goes so far that the beginning of its trail can’t be traced. I often have trouble falling asleep, so I’ll just lay in my bed and think until I fall asleep. However, as the school year begins and the workload starts to pick up, it becomes harder to find time to just lay down and think. In that respect, I want my blog to be a space where I can flesh out my incomplete thoughts; things I briefly thought about before falling asleep after a long day at school. Things I had begun but never finished writing in my journal.

I think it would be fitting to start this blog by talking about how I started journaling and the significance it has to me. I started journaling in elementary school because my parents told me it was a good habit to get into. To be honest, in elementary school, it felt like a chore, and all I wrote was what happened every day which wasn’t fun because interesting things rarely seemed to happen in my life. At least that’s what I thought. Looking back now, I can say that I would’ve had many things to write about, but in elementary school, I never thought too deeply about my life, which is why I felt as though I had nothing to write about. As I got older and begun to encounter new obstacles and experiences, I started to think much more about everything in general, and consequently started to find more use in my journal.

At first, I only wrote about things that I had the most intense emotions towards. If something made me extremely happy or extremely upset, I would make sure to note that in my journal. Later, I begun to take a step further by working out my emotions through writing. I didn’t just write down what made me feel a certain way, but I wrote about why I felt that way. Soon after, I started experimenting with the other end of the spectrum. I wrote about the most ridiculous, insignificant thoughts that had popped up into my head during the day. The journal was the perfect platform for me to talk about things on both ends of the spectrum. When I wanted to think through something I had strong feelings about, I couldn’t really talk to someone about it right away because I wouldn’t be able to articulate my thoughts correctly in the midst of the emotions I was feeling. When I wanted to think through something that had just randomly popped up in my head, I couldn’t talk to anyone about it because no one would be able to understand my thought process, and even if they could, they wouldn’t be interested. I found my journal to be the perfect solution to this problem. Ever since then, my journal has been on the receiving end of the endless conversations that take place in my head.  

Although I haven’t quit journaling, I haven’t been nearly as diligent with it as I was before. Through this blog I hope to revive my journaling habits and take a ride on my train of thought until I find my answers.