This year marks 20 years since I founded a company, which later grew and was recently acquired. It’s been an extremely intense, fun… and also mentally exhausting journey. In the past few years, I’ve had to pay close attention to and take care of my mental health. Many of the things that @cat and @jesse talk about have helped me. But if I had to choose one, without a doubt, it would be this: starting my personal journal.
I often write a digital personal journal where I reflect on my feelings, emotions, and experiences. Since I also have a knack for literature and writing, I enjoy crafting each entry, finding the precise poetic, lyrical words so that the form complements the content. It’s just like when I program software, but in natural language.
My personal journal is the chronicle of my journey towards my personal goals. In the first entries, I reflected and described precisely how I want to be in five years. Personally and professionally. Since then, my journal has been the logbook of my path towards the person I want to become and the successes I wish to achieve. Will I reach them? I’d like to, but I’m clear that what’s important is the journey, not the destination. The goals propel me forward. But it’s the movement that I enjoy.
Writing, writing to myself, has made me more aware of my moods and has forced me to calmly reflect on how I feel, what excites me, and what makes me uncomfortable. It’s also a beautiful private chronicle of my recent years, with photographs and memories that are now part of my biography. But in its pages, what I did doesn’t matter much; what matters is how I felt. These are thoughts, emotions, and experiences that slip through your fingers if you don’t catch and fix them with words.
This has helped me a lot mentally and gives structure to my life. It has also helped me detect mood cycles and emotional patterns that, without the journal, I wouldn’t have noticed follow a certain regularity. I encourage you to write, and above all, to find the tone and voice that are most useful to you for doing so.
Have been an on-and-off journal-er for a number of years, and have always noticed I do better when I'm on. Thanks for the thought! Might have to get back into an "on" cycle :)
This year marks 20 years since I founded a company, which later grew and was recently acquired. It’s been an extremely intense, fun… and also mentally exhausting journey. In the past few years, I’ve had to pay close attention to and take care of my mental health. Many of the things that @cat and @jesse talk about have helped me. But if I had to choose one, without a doubt, it would be this: starting my personal journal.
I often write a digital personal journal where I reflect on my feelings, emotions, and experiences. Since I also have a knack for literature and writing, I enjoy crafting each entry, finding the precise poetic, lyrical words so that the form complements the content. It’s just like when I program software, but in natural language.
My personal journal is the chronicle of my journey towards my personal goals. In the first entries, I reflected and described precisely how I want to be in five years. Personally and professionally. Since then, my journal has been the logbook of my path towards the person I want to become and the successes I wish to achieve. Will I reach them? I’d like to, but I’m clear that what’s important is the journey, not the destination. The goals propel me forward. But it’s the movement that I enjoy.
Writing, writing to myself, has made me more aware of my moods and has forced me to calmly reflect on how I feel, what excites me, and what makes me uncomfortable. It’s also a beautiful private chronicle of my recent years, with photographs and memories that are now part of my biography. But in its pages, what I did doesn’t matter much; what matters is how I felt. These are thoughts, emotions, and experiences that slip through your fingers if you don’t catch and fix them with words.
This has helped me a lot mentally and gives structure to my life. It has also helped me detect mood cycles and emotional patterns that, without the journal, I wouldn’t have noticed follow a certain regularity. I encourage you to write, and above all, to find the tone and voice that are most useful to you for doing so.
Have been an on-and-off journal-er for a number of years, and have always noticed I do better when I'm on. Thanks for the thought! Might have to get back into an "on" cycle :)