It’s not really an either/or choice, but there is a difference between journaling and keeping a diary.
A diary is where you keep a day by day account of events in your life. It’s a rolling datebook of significant or insignificant events that happened in your life, or maybe in the world around you, or maybe in the world at large. To be sure, it is personal to you and not for sharing. But it is also more of a report of events than an exploration of the deepest thoughts of your soul.
A journal, on the other hand, is all you. It’s where you divulge to yourself the deepest trials and tribulations of your spirit, or where you seek to capture unspeakable joy or spiritual ecstasy , or aha moments that change the way you see the world or yourself.
What we talk about most often in these blogs is the power of writing to heal your soul or enhance your well-being or give you a way out, a place where you can deposit your soul trash and clean your spirit.
It seems to me that journaling is a better fit for unfiltered writing than writing in a diary only because a diary can be one step removed from events while a journal is the pure unvarnished outpouring of your soul.
Plus a diary smacks of a daily list and the “daily” component applies the pressure to make an entry every day.
Some days you don’t want to bare your soul, or to feel pressured to write anything.
So, I guess my overall thought is to make your journal your holy place, an altar to your deepest emotions and thoughts. And if you want to do a diary, too, then keep it separate from your journal.
But that’s just me talking.
Comments