Bernard O'Shea: Journaling is one of the best things I've ever done

Unlike keeping a diary, journaling can be less structured. Essentially for me (and this is an important caveat), it is. 

I’ve talked to friends who can belt out three to four thousand words daily. For some people or me, it can be three or four illegible scribbles on a page. 

Unlike a diary, there is no agenda. It's more of a mental dump. 

With diary keeping, some people stick to the date religiously and edit what they have to write. People who have kept diaries for years will often re-edit some entries in case they are found or for prosperity's sake. 

Journaling is much more free form. 

It’s a Jackson Pollock instead of a Rembrandt, a Ramones track, not a Brahms Symphony just as powerful but a different kind of expression; hopefully, you get the idea.

It also helps if you’re a bit of a stationary addict. 

It wasn’t until my wife threw a few of her entry-level journals my way. It starts with one of those little red books and then moves on to a kids' copybook. After a visit to Eason’s, you get the taste of a few decorative bound books. 

Then you get hooked on the Moleskines for a while and bookmark their website, perusing it every day, convincing yourself that you need a “myrtle green” one to differentiate from the three empty ones you have sitting on your desk already. 

Before you know it, you buy a handmade leather-bound journal in Dingle on your holidays with a handwoven spine with ink-absorbing high-end paper. 

As you grab a sneaky smell of the luscious paper and leather mix, you say to yourself, “I have enough journals. I’m not buying any more”, but you're just fooling yourself.

As for your tool of choice, it’s a minefield. As someone obsessed with watches, pens were a likely stepping stone to land on. Once you start moving away from a trusty half-chewed bic, you are in financial hot water. 

Pen collectors, however, deserve an entire article to themselves. Still, eventually, you will start tentatively looking at Montblanc's whilst drooling over heritage Shaeffer’s that you know you have absolutely no need for.

But my stationary fetish is helpful and, dare I say it, almost healthy. Most of our writing work today is done on computers. There isn’t a physical connection between us and the page anymore. 

You can bang out words angrily or wistfully on a keyboard, but there’s something different about writing down your words and feelings with pen and paper.

The next time you’re about to send the “I quit” Friday e-mail take a look at the reflection of your face on the computer screen. It's probably when you are facially and mentally at your worst. 

But it’s a well-worn sage piece of advice. Before sending an all-out “everyone's at fault” e-mail, type it on your notepad and leave it for an hour. 

Then come back to it after you take a few breaths and a break. 

Guaranteed, 99% of the time, you won’t send it. 

This is one of the main ingredients of journaling. As I look over my journals, I see little phrases like “You're overthinking again” and “Will you just go for a walk”.

Here's a slightly embarrassing entry from last year to give you an excellent working example of how journaling has worked for me. To give it context, I stopped going to the swimming pool this year, although I’m in desperate need of devoting a few hours a week to regular exercise.

“Why won’t you go? You can finish this work when the kids go to bed. It's better than watching hours of youtube. Just stop overthinking it and go. 

"You are ashamed of your body, I know. But if you don’t go, you will not change it either. Why don’t we go and then if you hate it we never have to go again. Deal?”

That was all I wrote in my journal that week. 

It’s pathetic in its minor frivolity, but looking back on it shows how insecure I was and still am about returning to exercise after Covid. 

Hilariously dotted around the place, I've written dozens of times, “No one is looking at you.”

It’s a phrase I heard regularly growing up while my mother got me to try on new school pants in Dunnes. Don’t get me wrong; I was thankful for it years later when I got twenty minutes of stand-up out of it. But that’s the essence of journaling for me. I can be reflective and mindful while at the same time giving myself a pleasant kick up the arse.

But by far, the best use of the journaling technique is that it paints a reality tapestry for you before and after anxiety-filled events and allows you to make better decisions. 

The next time you have to meet or work with someone with whom you’re not looking to conversing with, write down how you feel about it. 

You will probably be more sympathetic and empathetic towards individuals who get on your wick. Also, if, like myself, you tend to look at the adverse outcomes scribbling down your felling for 60 seconds can make your thoughts seem ridiculous and poorly thought out.

Don’t get me wrong, I still put my foot in it at least three to four times daily and a week doesn't go past when I don't want the world to open up and swallow me whole. But, writing it down helps a lot. 

Now I just need to journal my feelings about buying a Montblanc rollerball pen that I've been looking at for the last year. 

Let's start with, “Ok; you don’t need this. Just wait until the next electric bill rolls in, or you have to fill up the car with diesel and see how you feel about it, then”.