Journaling in the Age of Uncertainty

I started keeping a journal as soon as I could write; actually, a little bit before that, as my very first journal opens with my parents’ handwriting, taking down stories and poems (featuring lots of ponies) from my dictation. That journal, covered in a fabric patterned with bows against a background of blue, now lives in a giant plastic storage bin along with 40 others, ranging in size and shape, some with lined pages, others unlined, each one an archive from a particular sliver of my life.

Journals are an end in themselves, a way of engaging with my own mind and discovering what I think.

These days, my journal is a spiral-bound notebook with a recycled cardboard cover. I appreciate the way that the spiral allows me to tuck a pen into it for safekeeping, so I never find myself without a way to write things down. I journal nearly every day—to recount events from my own life and the world around me, to think through a problem or question I have, or to copy down quotations from books I’m reading, fragments of poems, or songs stuck in my head.

When I reach the end of a journal, as I will with this one soon, I flip back through the pages to trace the arc of my thoughts and reflect on this particular season of life. Then I affix a strip of masking tape to the front, labeling with Sharpie the dates that it spans for easy reference in the future. And into the big plastic bin it goes.

As a nonfiction writer, I am often asked “How do you write with so much detail about the past? How do you remember everything?” The truth is, I don’t remember everything. That’s where the journals come in. But it would be disingenuous to imply that I keep them only for that reason, and I honestly don’t believe they would bring me nearly as much joy and pleasure if I did. The journals are an end in themselves, a way of engaging with my own mind and discovering what I think. Writing in my journal is a ritual that brings comfort and solace, and also revelation and growth. I learn so much about myself through the page.

Journaling in the classroom

For these reasons, I have made journaling the cornerstone of my classroom teaching practice. In a few weeks, I will enter my fourteenth year of teaching English to middle and high school students, and the very first thing we’ll discuss on the very first day of class is how and why we journal in Ms. Mehra’s class—paper journals, always private to them, inside which they can write or draw whatever they want.

I will never ask my students to hand their journals in. At the end of the semester, I will ask them to type up and polish excerpts of what they’ve written down, but what they share with me will be their choice. We will journal in class every...

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