I’m navigating some difficult shifts in my life, and I’ve turned to journaling as a way to help process all of the feelings that are coming up. I’ve journaled intermittently as an adult (especially while navigating the end of my marriage), but it never stuck for me long-term.
Let’s go back a few decades. I launched my first website when I was in 8th grade, and spent two formative decades writing for – and getting constant feedback from – an audience. Only recently have I realized just how much that experience shaped the person I am today.
In high school, everything was potential content. Family issues, relationship drama, trouble at school… I was so preoccupied with packaging these experiences for a captive online audience that I never fully showed up for them myself.
Looking back, I was not present for the hard stuff, and I don’t think I felt all of the feelings or fully processed these events, for better or worse. And without getting deep into it, my website got me into some serious trouble over the years.
One particular experience stands out to me that I’ll share: I was a high school kid with a popular website, but no credit card to pay for things like web hosting. But folks were always willing to host my site for free, so when I got booted from one host, another was waiting.
My website got mentioned on a radio station, and all of a sudden traffic went through the roof. I was hosting high-res images and mp3 files, and my bandwidth use skyrocketed. Within hours, my site took down the server that was hosting it. The person who was hosting the site for me was furious, so he deleted all of my files, and I didn’t have it all backed up.
I called him a mean name, and he went into turbo revenge mode.
In retrospect, this guy was trying to ruin my life. For weeks, he called my home phone (back in the landline days) at all hours and would threaten whoever answered. He tried (and almost succeeded) to get me expelled from school. He even contacted the police with fake server logs, claiming I’d launched a cyberattack on his business from a school computer.
That is a terrifying thing for a teenager to deal with. But I didn’t deal with it. I didn’t process the fear or the consequences. Instead, I called my friends to make them laugh about it, and as soon as I found a new webhost, I blogged about it. I took a traumatic event and immediately metabolized it into entertainment.
Because of that history, writing for an audience of one feels foreign to me. For twenty years, if I wrote words, they were for public consumption. Without a comments section, without email replies validating my experience, is writing words on a page time well-spent?
Journaling in Lone Pine, CA during my divorce, just before climbing Mt Whitney
If I write it down and nobody reads it, did it even happen?
The irony of writing about the importance of writing for myself, while publishing it here for an audience, is not lost on me. Albeit, it’s a much smaller audience these days (hi mom!).
I’ve been journaling every day of 2026 so far, and I’m seeing how taking time to reflect helps me to process things. I actually started this specific physical journal back in 2022 leading up to my divorce. At that time, writing felt like a “chore”… something I knew I should do, but didn’t really want to do. I started on page 19 at the beginning of this year, and the book is almost completely full. With only a few blank pages left, I’ll need a new journal before the end of February. Writing certainly has a different quality to it these days. It’s no longer a task to check off, but a space I actually want to inhabit (most days).
I’ve been ending each day by noting one thing I’m grateful for. Most days, I end up with two or three things. I’m noticing a bit more gratitude throughout the day now, even as I navigate grief and loss.
By leaning into journaling, I feel that I’m unlearning a decades-old survival mechanism. I spent years performing my life for an audience, so it’s an adjustment processing my life for myself, but I’m seeing that it is worthwhile.
I fell in love with writing in order to be heard by others. Now, I’m finding it’s more important to hear myself first.
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