I really did enjoy the experience of journaling. I didn’t stick to it as much as I had hoped I would, unfortunately. I told myself I wasn’t going to journal on the weekends, and then started slacking where I said it was okay if I missed one or two a week, and now here we are and I haven’t written an entry for two weeks. This is not fair to myself or to the people who read these on a regular basis, so I am sorry.
I learned a lot about myself. I’ve helped myself to determine my long term goals and where I want to be within the next five years or so. I’ve figured out what the recurring problems in my life are and what I can do about them. I’ve decided what the most important things in my life are, and reorganized my way of thinking to make sure I’m prioritizing the right things. I’ve learned that I need to be better disciplined; if I can’t stick to writing a short 10-minute entry in a journal every day, how can I ever expect to be successful?
The most difficult thing wasn’t coming up with answers to the prompts – it was the days that I wanted to write off prompt. I couldn’t think of what to write about! The more I wrote, the easier this became – as evidenced by the extra entries towards the end of this challenge. There were a few prompts in particular that I didn’t like (the stream of consciousness writing is the first that comes to mind), but they weren’t inherently difficult.
I would like to continue this practice, but I need to be realistic with myself and know that I probably won’t do this every day. Some days I just don’t have anything to write about. Other days I dive right into whatever I’m working on for the day and before I know it noon has come around and half of the day is gone. What I can do is eliminate the days where I just don’t have an excuse. There were way too many days where I just lacked motivation, but as I said in day 20, I can’t rely on motivation. I need to rely on discipline. This experience has been very beneficial to me, and if I can’t hold myself accountable for doing it then I won’t gain any of the benefits or have anything to show for my thoughts racing through my head constantly.
I’ll kickstart this again by trying to commit to one entry a week, and then maybe two. I’m not going to tell myself that I’m going to start writing again every day because if I set too high of an expectation for myself, then I won’t get anywhere and it’ll have a reverse effect. So, here’s my commitment to both you (the reader) and myself: I want to write at least one entry a week in this journal going forward. Even if it is just an entry about how my day went or what I have planned for the day, I need to write something.