Happy New Year! I've got a bit of a more personal entry for today.
Exactly two years ago on this day, I started keeping a journal for the first time. I'd figured on a whim that keeping a journal could be a good resolution for the new year, and that I'd probably do well to have a place to reflect on my thoughts.
And so I started keeping a daily journal, making an entry every single night before I went to sleep. It helped, having a place to be able to jot down the occurences of my days. The beginning of the year was an especially tumultuous time for me, and so I found it useful to get my feelings out of my head and onto paper—it helped me to feel more calm about things and keep myself looking forward.
About a month and a half into my journaling journey, however, I missed an entry. Something happened in a place where someone I knew lived, and although it didn't affect me directly, I was affected enough that I didn't write an entry that night. I haven't written an entry since.
And thus, my stint of daily journaling came to an end.
I think that one of the problems that I had in journaling (and with life in general) is that I feel like I view commitment as a binary thing—either I'm committed to something, or I'm not.
It seems like an easy mindset to justify—after all, why bother doing something in the first place if you're only going to half-ass it or drop it entirely halfway through? If you're going to do something, you may as well give it your all and end with something that you're proud of.
But I think that that mindset might be holding me back. Holding me back from trying new things, holding me back from starting new projects, holding me back from realizing my potential, and holding me back from being happy with myself.
To recognize and understand the consquences of this perfectionism has been easy enough. I've seen it take journaling away from me—even with all of the enjoyment and peace that journaling brought me, I couldn't bring myself to do it after failing that commitment just once. It's even affected how I use this website; I feel as though only my most polished works can go up here, which explains why I've only showcased a few projects out of the myriads I've started.
But to internalize what I know and defeat the perfectionist inside me is something else entirely. To know something in the mind is not to believe it in the heart, and I fear that overcoming my own pride might be on my to-do list up until the day I die.
In any case, I do want to get back into journaling. Maybe it's just the same impulsive feelings surrounding New Year's that got me into journaling two years ago, but I feel like I could really use the peace it brings.
But more than that, I want to get better with extending grace to myself. I want to be able to take pride in more than just my best work, and I want to be able to journal without having one missed entry be the end of it all. And though I can't access that same journal right now, I hope to create a wonderful collection of entries this year, whether or not it turns out to be complete.
Best wishes for a bright and graceful 2025!
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