Journaling – A Backup Hard Drive for Your Brain

Serendipity — When I awakened in the morning, I took a page with the date from a random book, which happened to be about natural disasters. So that became my quest, to find and contemplate a natural disaster. I photographed tornado damage in Mohican, printed the photo and glued it into my journal.

I have this theory. You can store just so much information in your brain. When you’ve reached capacity, whatever else you try to put in there just sloughs off and flows into the abyss — never to be retained or recovered.

So-called experts disagree. They claim that, as we get older, our brains shrivel up and no longer work as they should. Like other organs of the body.

Nonsense.

At 73, I know more than I ever have. If anything, I’m actually gaining insight — also known as wisdom. Which is no longer in demand.

Anyway, like most old people, I digress. This column is actually about journaling. Which has become a tool I use to compensate for the surplus information sloughing off my brain.

You could say that journaling is writing stuff down so you don’t forget it, but it’s much more than that. It can be drawing, taking photos, recording sounds, or pasting objects on a page. Physically or virtually.

I’m not sure if it counts as journaling if you paste, tape or staple things to a wall, bulletin board or the person standing in line in front of you at Kroger.

Journaling is more personal than that. You can choose to share what you put in your journal or not. Usually the latter.

I hadn’t really thought of sharing the contents of my journal until recently. A few weeks ago, Nelson Shogren invited me to a conference at Gorman Nature Center for writers, poets, artists, and musicians. The conference, just a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, involved creative folks sharing what they do with a focus on journaling. And nature, of course.

I didn’t know what to expect or whether I’d have anything to contribute. Yet there was something gnawing at me that made me decide to go; I’d been neglecting my journaling.

I’ve kept journals off and on all my life. In the past 14 months, it’s become more important to me. I’ve been journaling to help control my addictions — to alcohol and, more recently, to social media.

I haven’t consumed alcohol since mid-September 2023. Early this year, I also tried to curb my addiction to screens. That includes my smart phone, computer and TV screens. That went well for about six months but I’ve gradually fallen back into bad habits.

I don’t waste nearly as much time in front of screens as I had been. But it’s still far too much.

Keeping a journal helped a lot with that. Unfortunately, I’d gotten to the point where weeks passed without picking up a journal and jotting down ideas, deep thoughts, or notes about life and nature. And jokes. (Some of the jokes end up in my writing but most of them are for my own amusement.)

So, I went to Nelson’s mini conference hoping — maybe secretly hoping but not overly optimistic — that it might jump-start my journaling. It did.

I did a little research about journaling after the fact. There are so many reasons to keep a journal on a daily basis — including mental health, enhanced creativity, fighting addiction and jogging your memory.

In that respect, it’s like adding a second hard drive to your brain. Which is great if you’re my age, close to it, or just a young scatterbrain. Or, like me, an old scatterbrain.

Now, if I can just avoid misplacing my journal.

This originally was published in the Ashland Times-Gazette.