The Hidden Value of Keeping a Diary or Journal

When you think of diary or journal keeping, the image that may immediately come to mind is that of a teenage girl pouring her heart out onto the pages about her latest heart throb or scribbling words of angst about an unfair tragedy that happened at school. But writing your thoughts and feelings down in a book or typing them up on the computer can be a worthwhile endeavor no matter what your gender or age happens to be. Even if you don't write a new entry every day, it is always interesting to go back to what you wrote months or even years later and revisit who you were at that time.

I have a diary that one of my aunts gave me several years ago, right as I was starting high school. Throughout those four years and both during and after college, it was the occasional venting ground for those moments when talking about events and emotions wasn't an option and it had to get out somewhere. But it was also a place where I sometimes wrote about my dreams (both the snippets I remembered from a night's slumber and my ever changing aspirations).

It was where I began to scribble down ideas for stories and their potential characters. And yes, every time I fell in love or suffered heartache, my diary held an account of the experience and recorded the emotions felt. When you go back and re-read what was written years before, you remember the person you used to be and can see the places where you've changed. Sometimes it's even like taking a step back into time as you are reintroduced to friends you may no longer know and events you had forgotten. Sometimes you discover strange things about the former you (I used to think/believe that?) that help to make sense of who you are now.