Lockdown diaries: the everyday voices of the coronavirus pandemic

From theconversation.com
By Michael Ward

A diary is by its very nature an intensely personal thing. It’s a place to record our most intimate thoughts and worries about the world around us. In other words, it is a glimpse at our state of mind.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic, and the impact of the lockdown, have left many people isolated and scared about what the future might bring. As a sociologist, I was keen to hear how people were experiencing this totally new way of life. So in early March I began the CoronaDiaries – a sociological study which aimed to highlight the real voices and the everyday experiences of the pandemic by collecting the accounts of people up and down the UK, before, during and after the crisis.

From the frontline health worker concerned about PPE and exposure to COVID-19, to the furloughed engineer worried about his mental health, these are the voices of the pandemic. Entries take a variety of forms, such as handwritten or word-processed diaries, blogs, social media posts, photos, videos, memes and other submissions like songs, poems, shopping lists, dream logs and artwork. So far, the study has recruited 164 participants, from 12 countries, aged between 11 and 87. These people come from a range of backgrounds.

When I began this project in March, I did not expect the study to prove so popular. I have been studying and working as a sociologist for nearly 20 years and most of my research so far has looked at how young men experience education, gender roles and social inequality.

Like many of us, I was wondering how I could be of use at this time, do my bit in the crisis and make the most of my skills. As the weeks have gone by and more and more people have signed up, I’ve realised this project isn’t just a research study to understand how society is being made and remade – it is also providing hope and acting as a cathartic coping tool for people. While some of the documents have made me cry, especially those from already vulnerable people, others have made me laugh and have been a joy to read. I feel as though I am on a journey with the participants as we move through the crisis.

Reading the entries, what becomes clear as the lockdown is eased is that this pandemic has been – and will continue to be – experienced in very different ways across society. For some, the crisis has been an opportunity, but for others, who are already in a disadvantaged position, it is a very frightening experience.

March – first days

The frontline health worker
Emma is in her late 30s, and a frontline health worker in a rural location in Wales. Like many key workers, Emma is also juggling family life and caring responsibilities. In a diary entry written in mid-March, Emma foresaw issues with PPE in the NHS.

On my shifts over the previous weekend, it became apparent how unprepared we are. I was working on a ‘clean’ ward and four of the patients were found to potentially be infected. There were no clinical indications they were potentially infected on admission and had been nursed without PPE for two days. We may have all been exposed, as these patients are suspected to have COVID-19. We have been given bare bones PPE. It was quite sobering when a rapid response was called and the doctors refused to enter the cubicle without FFP3 masks, blue gown and visor.

     A lack of PPE is a source of constant worry for healthcare workers. Shutterstock/kovop58

Emma said the equipment “magically turned up” after the doctors took this stand but said the sight of them all in surgical gowns, helmets and visors “did verge on the ridiculous”. She added:

I did find it amusing – we’re looking at the doctors wanting their protection and they are looking at the consultant wanting his! It did feel like a farce. Fortunately, the patient was made stable and went to surgery for another issue. But the whole episode was worrying, particularly the crappy surgical mask and aprons we are provided. It’s also galling that they have told staff there is no PPE when clearly there is. Can’t help but think a lack of information is creating fear amongst staff. It’s also weird they aren’t testing staff unless they’re symptomatic. This is crazy when they are so dependent on bank and agency workers who move around.

The worried mum
Beth, 35, is a mother of two young children who lives in a busy city. In the early days of the crisis, she hid her fears from her children. Here is a snapshot from her written diary:

I didn’t sleep well last night, didn’t help I watched the news before going to sleep. Then looked at my phone and full of corona news … Today was the big announcement from Boris (Friday, March 20) ‘to stay in’! Even though he had been saying this all week, the tone and manner of the broadcast was so scary and serious. I felt scared for my family and it just made me fearful of what is to come. I rang my mum straight away … [she] could hear my fear. After a good chat … my mum … remind[ed] me ‘we are all well at this moment’ and to focus on that. My daughter cried later that evening. I said, ‘what are you scared of’ to which she replied, ‘I’m not sure mummy, I don’t know what I am scared of.’ Which made me realise that I need to be brave and make sure that both kids are reassured. Later that evening, I felt tearful and just feeling overwhelmed by the whole situation. How stupid too, because we are all safe.

The student
Audrey, 21, goes to a university in Birmingham and is in the final months of her degree. The rupture of “normal” student life became clear when the full scale of the lockdown came into force, causing her housemates to leave their shared house.

I’d just lost all three of my housemates, who’d returned to Barbados, Spain and France – literally one day after each other. My landlord really kindly agreed that my sister could stay with me – and she won’t even charge any rent. I almost cried when I got that message. I was having a facetime with my friend, where we paused to watch Boris Johnson’s speech (March 23). It was so scary because we were effectively in lockdown. I had told my sister that I thought it was about to happen earlier in the day, she didn’t believe me – and then unfortunately it came true! I told her to jump on the train from Manchester.

Audrey went on to write how some of her fellow students set up a food bank in one of the student accommodations near her and that she is determined help where she can. But despite her altruistic efforts, the lockdown was still taking its toll.

I feel deflated from everything. I chatted to a friend over Messenger and she suggested I paint something. I painted this rainbow and felt so much better at the end. I added in my favourite quote that gets [me] through any hard times and stuck it on the window. 

The cleaner
Eva is a self-employed cleaner, in her mid 50s, who lives in South Wales with her husband, John, who works in a factory making hand sanitiser. As the lockdown entered its second month, she reflected on her relationship with the woman who worked for her and how differently the pandemic was effecting them both.

Today I am cleaning the community centre, which since the lockdown, is running as a food bank three days a week … I bleach everything, door handles, floors, everything. Most staff work from home at the moment so we are going in the morning until all this is over. I’m glad I’m still in business for Beverly, who works with me, as much as anything. I’m her only income, but if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. We have a cigarette break outside and I remind Beverly to stay apart. ‘What, beans for brekkie, was it?’ I laugh. Beverly really doesn’t care about COVID – like many others I meet, who believe if they get it, they get it.  

                                    Cleaning during the pandemic. Shutterstock/natali_mis

For once I’m glad I’m a worrier, plus I’m not ready to die yet. We are out of there early as no staff equals less mess. I break it to Beverly that I can’t give her a lift home for now. Last week I made her sit in the back [of the car] which felt faintly ridiculous, but John advised even that’s too close. Beverly shrugs and says that’s fine. Her son died unexpectedly two years ago and now she accepts hardship with ease. I feel bad as her life really is crap and now she has to walk two miles home.

The teacher
Sophia is a teacher in her 40s and based in the south of England. She is trying to home school her children during the lockdown and being a parent and a teacher is proving challenging.

We began the day slightly differently with an online PE lesson from someone called Joe Wicks, or The Body Coach. He’s been really popular during the lockdown and a few of my friends recommended the 30-minute workout session he does every day at 9am, so I thought we’d give it a go! Unfortunately, my two have the concentration spans of goldfish so it didn’t go according to plan! My son ended up lying upside down, with his legs on a chair and his head on the floor and my daughter said he moved too fast, before promptly falling on her behind! The only problem with changing the routine was that we were then 30 minutes late for home school and my son does not cope well with change. He needs quite a rigid structure, with clearly defined timings and any changes can be detrimental. The speed of the school lockdown was particularly challenging: school gives his day structure and taking it away so abruptly was very difficult for him.

The civil servant
Sarah is a civil servant in her mid-60s working in a pivotal role for HM Revenue and Customs. She used her diary to document the rapid changes which have taken place in her organisation since the lockdown and how working from home was becoming “normal” from March 23.

My department is changing so quickly – we have introduced a new i-form to promote more ‘web chat’. This is proving popular with the public. We are trialling taking incoming telephone calls at home. We are all now working from home when we can, no more car sharing, unless it’s with someone you live with – we must keep two metres apart. I am beginning to accept that this is a crisis, once in a generation, completely alien to us. Will life in the future be remembered as ‘before and after’ COVID-19? For the first time in many years I feel so proud to work where I do…I understand, possibly for the first time, why we are ‘key workers’. We have a letter as proof to show the police if we are ever stopped whilst travelling into work and NCP carparks are free for us to use if we come into work! No better validation than that!

The furloughed engineer
Lucas, a man in his late 30s from Northern Ireland, is finding the pandemic difficult on multiple levels. It’s a trigger for his mental health, but also it is a reminder of past troubles.

Nightmare. Anxiety, fear, dread, no way to burn off the angst, worry upon worry, like how the inside of my head can be at times. Then there’s the ones that are really in the middle of it, nurses dying because there was no proper PPE at the right time, people losing parents, friends, and IMHO worst of all, kids.

Lucas writes about how he stopped watching the news because in an attempt to “avoid anxiety”. He adds:

I grew up in Northern Ireland during ‘the troubles’ and it was totally normal for me to watch the news every night at tea time [6pm] and hear of various paramilitary groups killing people. That was 100% normal to me. Looking back watching the news in those times did me no good. Sure, I know some facts about it all, but do I feel any better for it … Same as now, I’m going to try to ride this out with my hands over my ears and my head in the sand at times.

The academic
Jack, 72, is a retired academic who used his diary to comment on societal problems. One of which is the narrative of what the “new normal” is and how society is being remade.

April 29 saw the return of Boris, who was to ‘take control of the problem’. An almost religious return for someone who came back from being nearly dead on Easter Sunday! It seems we are being told to be ready for the new normal which again raises the issue of what post-lockdown will be like. On the web I don’t see sociologists rushing in to think about this new normal! A Google search suggests that the new normal is being constructed largely by those in business and is largely focused on the new normal being a more exaggerated (and better?) version of the old normal – more globalisation, more focus on customers and so on. There is little ‘thinking outside the box’.

May – Looking forward

The bell-ringer
Daniel, a man in his mid-20s, had just started a new relationship in February with a woman he met while bell-ringing at a church in the Midlands. However, both he and his girlfriend live apart and have not seen each other since the lockdown began. Over the past few months, Daniel has found this a challenge, but has documented how their relationship has been maintained virtually and through the help of keeping a diary.

                                                                    Shutterstock/Begood

Suzy and I have got to know each other a lot quicker and a lot better than what we may have done otherwise, and whilst we do miss each other immensely, it’ll make the good times so much better when we do see each other next. Whenever and however we get out of this, I am determined that I will have made the most of these extraordinary circumstances.

This is just a glimpse of the stories that have been gathered by the CoronaDiaries project, but already patterns are emerging. While this crisis is undoubtedly impacting on people across the globe, what is clear from these accounts is that there are multiple crises across everyday life – for the young, the old, for mothers and for fathers and for those from different class, gender and ethnic backgrounds. These entries are able to highlight the multiple different lives behind the dreaded numbers we hear announced each day.

My diarists have been recording how they feel vulnerable and uncertain about their future – but there is also hope that things will not be like this forever.

The evidence which is being gathered here can play an important part in addressing the social, political and economic changes created by the COVID-19 pandemic. This type of analysis will foster global awareness of crucial issues that can help support specific public health responses to better control future outbreaks and to better prepare people for future problems. The study will run until September and all accounts will then be available to view in a free digital online archive.

All the names used in this piece have been changed at the request of the study participants.

https://theconversation.com/lockdown-diaries-the-everyday-voices-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-138631

Paul Workman: Locked down in London, Day 50

From ctvnews.ca

LONDON, U.K. -- Dear Diary,

Another sleepless night and then the crazy dog downstairs started yapping, and my phone began beeping, and this all happened before the sun came up. You know, diary, I think I’m losing it. Day 50. How much longer can this go on?
That bottle of vodka I bought? I can’t tell if it’s half-full or half-empty. Either way, it’s half gone. (This is where somebody else would insert one of those wide-eyed smiley faces.)

You’re right. I should have bought more vodka and less toilet paper. This lockdown is messing with my priorities. You should see the cans of pork and beans in our cupboard. I hate pork and beans.

I have to go now diary, I need to walk the dog and avoid coming into contact with anybody who might remotely be a COVID super spreader. They’re still out there, I can feel it, hiding in the bushes, waiting to pounce. Sometimes I think they’re coming after me.

Told you I was losing it.

                                            An undated file photo of a desk diary. (Pexels)

Okay, hand-washers, how many of you are really keeping a lockdown diary?  A lot of people in this country are—teams of people in fact—writing down their feelings, their fears, anything about their daily lives as part of a living history project.

The idea goes back to 1937 when three former students at Cambridge started something called, Mass Observation—mostly because they didn’t like what the newspapers were describing as the “public mood” in Britain.
It really came to prominence in the war when 500 “citizen journalists” were recruited to write about virtually every aspect of their daily lives—life on the home front. And they did, in great and personal detail.
The project and the title were both ambitious: “Anthropology of Ourselves.” Winston Churchill used it to craft some of his wartime policies.

The same mass observation technique is being applied to this age of pandemic—albeit the tools of messaging and posting and vlogging and blogging make it far easier.
“I have an iffy heart,” one diarist wrote. “So I reckon I’m in a possible ‘going downhill’ bracket if I catch it.”

Some postings complain about lockdown violators and the “irresponsible media” of course, but also, there’s a good deal of heartfelt affection towards people they know, and some they don’t—all enduring this ordeal together.
“What’s lovely,” the same man wrote, “is folk smiling and waving, sometimes stopping to talk. I’ve stood and chatted to folk for nearly half an hour sometimes.”

So, diary, as I was saying earlier, I’m reaching my limit. No seriously, there are moments when I just want to rip off my facemask, dump my surgical gloves, throw away my bottle of hand sanitizer…and go sunbathing.

It’s allowed now you know. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said so.
Unfortunately, his health secretary announced today that summer has been cancelled. Good cop, bad cop.

No, no diary. Those aren’t tears. And the bottle of vodka is definitely half-empty. 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/paul-workman-locked-down-in-london-day-50-1.4936179

The heartening boom in handwriting

From life.spectator.co.uk

By Melanie McDonagh

There’s an upside to lockdown. If our home habits are discernible from consumption, we’re turning into altogether nicer people. We’re writing more by hand and we’re writing more letters.

This is the finding of the upmarket stationers, Smythson, which does terrifically covetable writing paper, correspondence cards and notebooks. It’s seen an increase of over 80 per cent in stationery sales in April. The range of plain stationery is up by more than 200 per cent. Record books – for journals – are up by over 70 per cent; notebook orders have doubled and telephone and address books sales have increased by 355 per cent. I can relate to that last one. The one thing I do when I have me time  – every seven years or so – is to fill in a new address book, a melancholy record of death and loss..

It’s a lockdown trend, handwriting. A YouGov survey done with the Prince’s Trust with a hefty sample of 1,200 11-21 year olds found that 27 per cent wrote their thoughts and feelings on paper at least once a week. Well over half, 58 per cent, of journal-keepers are girls. And of the total, 46 per cent said that writing things down was more helpful than typing them into a laptop or a phone. A quarter said keeping a daily diary was beneficial – as opposed to the three per cent who said that blogging was beneficial, or commenting online – four per cent.

In other words, engaging with the online world is by some distance less beneficial than actually writing stuff down. There’s something about the process of inscribing physical ink on a physical page that involves our brain and hand in a more sensual and immediate way than the fingers-keyboard-screen nexus.

Putting pen to paper is a physical activity: you see and feel the medium you write with – whether it’s pencil, pen or ballpoint. Cardinal Newman wrote with a quill up to his death at the end of the nineteenth century, and he was a prodigious letter writers (his correspondence fills 30 volumes). What that meant was that he, like every other writer up to modern times, constantly heard the scratch of the nib on paper, constantly modified his writing to take account of the flow of ink and the avoidance of blots. Handwriting means you engage with a writing instrument. And with the physicality of the paper…woven, smooth or textured, thin or thick.

This sensuous aspect of writing may explain why handwriting – sequential hand movement – seems to engage parts of the brain that keyboard use doesn’t, as shown by magnetic resonance imaging. And cursive script – longhand – means that the flow between brain and hand is more fluent than if you don’t use joined up script.

An obvious aspect of writing by hand is that you have to think before you write; your sentences are formed in the brain before you put them down. If you make a mistake on screen it’s easily remedied. When you’re writing on paper, there’s an incentive to avoid error and get the sense formed before you begin. If you ruin the whole thing, you have to bin the paper. Obviously it matters less if you’re writing a journal (unless you’re intending it should be read) but still you need to think before engaging the hand. Bluntly, that means you write less than on screen; a stream of consciousness – drivel – is much easier to get away with on a keyboard.

For a journal, you need a decent notebook, large enough to write good sized entries; small enough to hide away.

But letters need more thought. There are few more satisfying pleasures than writing letters by hand. The process of writing is physically gratifying; the visual appearance of a well written letter is pleasing to writer and recipient. It requires effort and the effort shows. And as we all know how characteristic of a person their hand (that is, handwriting) is. It’s a giveaway of character.

A pre-requisite of a satisfying letter is good writing paper – which takes an effort to find. I went into Paperchase few months ago for some and the assistant looked at me baffled; her boss had to direct me to the bottom shelf. Smaller branches don’t stock it. But if a whole page is too intimidating, a correspondence card is fine. Good, thick writing paper is an incentive in itself to write well.

And you need a pen, a fountain pen, to write properly. It gives you a smooth flow of ink and the sensuous pleasure of holding a perfectly adapted instrument. Plus there’s the environmental advantage of a fountain pen over a disposable biro or felt-tip, one you can refill from a pot of ink. God knows how many dolphins have choked on Bic plastic pens. Cartridges are less problematic but they’re still waste. What you need is a converter to switch to bottle ink.. I use a very good Cross pen – with a separate converter. Mine’s a Wanderlust, £85, but you can get a cheaper model for £20. Lamy pens with their cheerful colours also take a separate converter.

But if you’re one of those who uses an actual dip pen, where you have to keep putting your nib in an inkwell, and using blotting paper against smears, I salute you. Done well, that’s proper writing, and it shows.

https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/the-heartening-boom-in-handwriting/

When I Die ...

By Tim Holman

For anyone who has been serious about keeping diaries, it's worth considering what will happen to them when you, their writer, has died.

For online diaries, there isn't much you can do. They will exist for a while in a cyberspace graveyard until one day their website isn't renewed, or simply disappears for some reason. (It can happen.)

But for physical, paper diaries there are a few more options. One's descendants or friends might proactively retrieve them, possibly to read or at least preserve them for posterity. On the other hand, they might not. So it's worth stipulating in your Will what you wish to happen. Give your next-of-kin a choice: keep the diaries if they wish, or hand them over to a third party for long-term preservation.

In Britain, a splendid body called The Great Diary Project exists for this very purpose. The Project is based at the Bishopsgate Institute, close to Liverpool Street in London and describes its mission thus: "Once a diary is no longer 'contemporary' its message can have value and interest for many other readers who come after."

Further details can be found at https://www.thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/

I think that's what I'll do with my own diaries. Some of them are quite thin, bland and uninteresting. Others are rather more juicy; I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but I think they're worth preserving for a while.

OK, so where did I put my Last Will & Testament? It's time for an update!

The Habit of a Journalist

By Hellen Greek

Out of all the activities, journaling according to me is the healthiest activity. You feel relieved after spilling out every single thought going through your head. It is a fun activity as well because you play with your own words and ways of expression. Everyone should make journaling a habit.

Most of us feel like giving up writing after a week or two. Have you ever wondered why does this happen? This is because we don't make it a routine habit. We actually think of it as a hectic task but not as a pleasurable and joyful activity.

At the very beginning we get stuck at finding the right topic to write on. One easiest way of getting rid of this problem is to right about what you've done for the whole day. Write down about your daily routine, your work, your love life, things you like and things you dislike. Writing about your own self is one of the simplest topic you can ever find.

Secondly, reading can also help. Searching for random stuff on internet including journals written by different people can give you various ideas about what to write and how to write it. Reading helps you learn better ways to express your thoughts and ideas. This is how you learn how to express your inner thoughts and feelings through relevant and affective words.

Try to find out inspirations. Your inspirations and aspirations are basically the sources of motivation. Bookmark the journals, articles, quotes or texts you like. Keep a record for present and future reference.

Environment and your state of mind are also quite important. The time when you wake up in the morning is considered as the period when you can effectively utilize all your senses to produce excellent work. Moreover, it is important to be in a relaxing environment where you feel good. It affects your mind more than you can imagine and it enhances the productivity rate as well. For instance, while sitting under a huge tree with a cup of tea, you can think about so many things and can transform all those thoughts and ideas into some amazing words. All you need is a good diary with a fine pen like that of Parker or Pelikan.

In the end, all I want to say is if you want to write, just start doing it. You will feel a lot better and productive. Mark my words.

https://ezinearticles.com/?The-Habit-of-a-Journalist&id=9855232

6 Reasons to Keep A Diary

From blog.innerdrive.co.uk

Benjamin Franklin used to begin each day by asking himself “What can I do well today?”. He then wrote those things down in a diary. Come the end of that day, he would then review each of his goals, making a note of how he could improve on the things he didn’t do so well.

Effective Journal Writing

By Robert Waldvogel

INTRODUCTION:

"The unexamined life is not worth living," wrote Greek philosopher Socrates, and the personal or professional journal may be one of the principal ways to do so.

Although it may not be classifiable as a literary genre, it could be the most important one, since it enables a person to intimately connect with his inner voice and discover his personal truth. Pursuing a hectic schedule, with little time for thought or reflection, the writer can consider his journal both a place and an act that enables him to converse with self and commune with soul, enabling him to sort out, process, understand, and accept what he transfers from his head or heart into his book, often reaching parts of him he never could. For this reason, journal writing can be considered thinking on paper.

To capture something through the written word is to give it form and make it real, and the journal can be the stage on which its spotlight can be shone. It can become an anchor in a person's life storm and the dock to which he can return after each day's drift.

JOURNAL WRITING DEFINED:

Unlike other literary forms, which are dictated by specific rules and formats, journals are personal, highly individualized collections of writing, contributed to at a frequency that serves the author. Nevertheless, it can serve numerous purposes.

Because most people negotiate life at a hectic pace, with little time to intellectually or emotionally process what occurs to them, journals can serve as their pauses, during which they can digest everything-or opportunities to 'catch up" on what may have proven only cursory abilities to interpret and accept.

They can provide gradual understanding of who they are, particularly on the inside.
They allow them to examine their past and set courses for their future-that is, where they have been and to where they need to go.
They can foster organization and structure in both their personal and professional lives.
They can serve as archives or histories, documenting and preserving what memory may not always easily recall.
They can be used to develop ideas and demonstrate learning in classroom settings, replacing traditional exams.
Their entries mark the milestones of their life journeys.
They can serve as life management tools.
They can lead to writing fluency and increased speed, and serve as the thresholds to other writing genres.
Finally, they can be considered methods by which the writer communicates with the self and communes with the soul.

PUBLISHED JOURNALS:

There have been several published journals throughout history, including the Chinese historical documents of 56 AD, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, The Diary of Anne Frank of 1952, and the countless electronically-accessible blogs (web logs), which have served as personal memoirs or autobiographies to record their authors' lives and provide the insight resulting from them to their readers. Whether the present-time journalist elects to keep his work private or publish, it remains within his will.

JOURNAL WRITING TECHNIQUES:

Because of the personalized nature of a journal, which is not restricted to or molded by other genre parameters, the frequency with which an author contributes to it, the formal or informal writing style he uses, the deliberate elimination of conventional sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation, the inclusion of doodles and/or sketches, the employment of a purposefully purchased diary or plain spiral notebook or computer application such as Microsoft word, and its length are all author-chosen to facilitate his goal for undertaking the project.

Since most people have multi-faceted lives, they may elect to create several separate journals, such as those for his personal, student, and professional life aspects. Intended to enhance, they cannot be equated with any amount of right or wrong-only usefulness-and can be designated by any number of identifiers, including "journal" itself, "diary," "log," "notebook," or "workbook."

"(Nevertheless), we define a journal as a sequential, dated chronicle of events and ideas, which includes the personal responses and reflections of the writer (or writers) on those events and ideas," according to Dannelle D. Stevens and Joanne E. Cooper in their book, "Journal Keeping" (Styles Publishing, 2009, p. 5).

There are, however, several writing techniques.

1). Conventional: The conventional method adheres to standard sentence, spelling, grammatical, and punctuation rules, but can require more time to create and express through pauses between lines or entries.

2). Free-writing: Because the relaxed, less structured, free- or stream-of-consciousness writing eliminates pauses and the obstacles inherent with more traditional grammatical usage, the journalist may be less inhibited in his attempts at expression. He can, for instance, continuously write for varying time intervals without ever lifting his pen from his paper. There are many benefits to this technique.
a). It frees and unclutters the brain.
b). It can serve as a warm-up for later, more formalized literary expression.
c). It is idea- and thus self-generating, almost like a rolling snowball.
d). It establishes the person's voice.
e). It fosters fluency of expression.
f). It can develop ideas in their raw, unedited form. Although their value may not be immediately apparent, the process provides a method of capturing them. "First, original ideas are often hard to find, yet free-writing, with its lack of constraints, encourages, supports, and even cheers the production of words in whatever form," noted Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 80).

3). Forced free-writing: Employing the same literary rule-disregarding, uninterrupted-session style, forced free-writing differs in that it is intended to "force" the journalist to explore a very specific topic or subject, such as, "Why am I finding it difficult to be positive today" or "What are my feelings about resigning from my job?"

4). Creating lists: Some journalists find it easier to avoid sentences altogether and express ideas, thoughts, observations, and feelings in list form, leaving explanation in greater depth for a later time. The person contemplating a resignation, for instance, my list "scared," "unknown," "unsafe," "no money," "something new." Lists can additionally skirt the fringes of an issue he does not have the time to delve into or express with more formalized structure, and serve as the key points he may wish to explore in the future.

5). Dialoguing: A journalist may employ the dialogue method to converse with himself or parts of himself he cannot necessarily connect with, making them "other" or "separate" until he can reclaim them. He can also use dialogue to practice what he perceives will be a difficult or strained conversation with another person. Both methods employ objectification.
"When we objectify an experience, a relationship, our feelings, our worries, and our obligations, we gain some control and we can look at them from a different perspective to understand them anew," according to Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 89).
By providing this separation, the journalist is no longer at the centre of unresolved feelings, fears, or anxieties, enabling him to assess them through the written word without being overtaken by them. Writing reroutes the experience through the brain.
6). Other expressive methods: If the journalist employs visual skills, he may augment his entries with any number of doodles, diagrams, sketches, drawings, and emoji's.
While there is no standard, journal-writing format, the conventional, rule-devoid, and dialogue-based ones are the most frequently used, examples of which appear below.

Conventional:

My flight from Aruba landed at about 2:00 this afternoon. Then, after waiting for some time at the baggage belt, I picked up my suitcases and called a taxi. It was actually cheaper than leaving my car in the long-term lot for ten days. Since it was still pretty early, there was no rush hour traffic, so I made it home in 20 minutes.

My apartment seemed different somehow when I walked in. The first order of business was to unpack. This is the least favorite part of any trip. But it was worth it, because the trip itself was enjoyable. I feel more relaxed. I got a little suntan. Maybe I'll go back there next year.

Rule-Devoid:

Oh, no! Like the movie Groundhog Day. Started all over again. Janet. Ugh! Ugly-the feelings. Broke up with her three months ago. No, not again! Million people in this city! Had to run into you today! Keep walking, you... Out! Out! Give me a break

Dialogue-Based:

I This isn't the first time it's happened.
Me: I know.
I: But why?
Me: You know why.
I: No, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't be asking you now.
Me: Well, you know. If I know, then you know. You just don't want to remember.
I: I don't know what to make of that. Anyway, everyone seems to enjoy going to parties and I'd like to be one of them. But every time I try, I feel such anxiety on the inside.
Me: I know. I'm the one giving it to you.
I: But why? What purpose does it serve?
Me; Do you enjoy going to parties?
I: No, I just told you I don't.
Me: Does anxiety keep you away from them sometimes?
I: Yes, of course! I just said that.
Me: Then maybe that's the purpose-to keep you away.
I: What're you against me or something?
Me: No, we're the same person.
I: So why do you stop me and why do I want to go?
Me: Do you remember that bad incident you-we-had at your party when you were ten?
I: No... wait! It's just coming back to me now. I'd forgotten about it.
Me: Well, I haven't, because you never dealt with it. Do you want that to happen again?
I: No, no, of course not!
Me: Then by me sending up anxiety, it keeps you away, so it'll never happen again.
I: I'd completely forgotten about that! But what makes you so sure it will happen again?
Me: Because, until you fully deal with what happened the first time, there's the possibility that it will happen a second time.
I: Then how do I turn it off, once and for all, so I can enjoy parties again?
Me: Deal with it! Process it! Don't just push it away and pretend that it never happened, because it did. Reduce it. Take the anxiety off of it until there's none left to feel. Then we'll go together, in harmony, not in conflict, and really enjoy the experience.
I: Then we really are one!
Me: When you deal with this, we will be.

JOURNAL WRITING ELEMENTS:

While journals reflect the author of them and therefore serve his purpose, they can be associated with six aspects.
1). Written or recorded: Information, ideas, thoughts, observations, questions, feelings, emotions, and musings, along with any applicable visual entries, such as doodles, emoji's, sketches, and drawings, are all recorded on paper or electronically, saved in a computer hard drive or on a USB stick.
2). Dated: Since journal entries document and preserve snippets of a person's life, they should be dated to maintain sequential ordering, enabling the person to later gauge his growth and development in terms of his personal and professional interactions, abilities, insight, and strengths. They can facilitate his understanding of how and why he developed as a result of them.
3). Informal: Informal entries, thoughts, incomplete sentences, and phrases should facilitate ease of expression, avoiding restrictions more structured writing may impose. How much the journalist endeavors to adhere to standard language usage depends upon his writing skill and need.
4). Flexible: The journal provides the greatest degree of choice and flexibility in terms of composition, purpose, format, length, and type of entries, including with whom the author elects to share them.
5). Private or public: As indicated, the journalist may decide to keep his work under lock and key, share it with close friends, read portions of it to other students, or hand it in to a professor in the event that it is used as part of a course's grading system. Celebrities and political and sports figures may earn significant sums of money by publishing their journals.
6). Archival: As a person progresses through life, earlier journals can serve as preserved archives and can be instrumental in the recall of events and his understanding of his self-development. While entries are important, the silent intervals between them may also be revealing. "Historically, journals have been quite important in understanding and examining daily life," noted Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 7).

JOURNAL WRITING BENEFITS:

Although there are numerous benefits to maintaining a journal, there are eight primary ones.

1). They foster clear thinking and understanding.
2). They facilitate personal growth and development.
3). hey enable the journalist to process and integrate difficult life events.
4). They enable him to explore and sort out sometimes difficult and not clearly defined feelings and emotions.
5). They enable the person to learn from his experiences and potentially adjust his attitudes and behaviors toward them.
6). They facilitate the charting of future actions and strategies.
7). They improve his communication and writing skills.
8). They can emotionally unburden him and improve his mental, emotional, and physical states. "(An) ancillary benefit of journal keeping is that reflective writing decreases stress and improves health," according to Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 15). "There is solid scientific evidence that journal writing improves both emotional and physical health with benefits accruing to both healthy and unhealthy individuals who write regularly about troubling or traumatic events in their lives."

THE JOURNAL'S DUAL PURPOSES:

While journal writing, as already discussed, can serve many functions, it can be reduced to two fundamental ones-that is, record and reflect. The first, the documentation of a person's endeavors, activities, actions, interactions, and feelings, is self-explanatory, but the second may carry more importance than is initially apparent.

"The function of reflective thought is... to transform a situation in which there is an experienced obscurity, doubt, conflict, (or) disturbance of some sort into a situation that is clear, coherent, settled, (and) harmonious," wrote Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 21).
Reflection, moreover, enables a person to examine, contemplate, and review an experience and then gain some degree of learning or modify his future actions based upon it.

Although there are several methods of reflecting, the journal facilitates it by providing concrete evidence of a person's evolving thought processes, resulting in valuable, but often fleeting glimpses of understanding. As a channel to self-knowledge, it can be considered a significant life-evaluation tool. It enables the journalist to reconstruct prior experiences, derive meaning from them, and make pertinent corrections for the future. In essence, it enables him to record something that occurred outside of him and then reflect upon how it affected something on the inside of him.

LEARNING TYPES:

These examples illustrate the fact that there are two fundamental types of learning and that the journal can be instrumental in one of them.
1). Informational learning: The acquisition of facts, knowledge, tools, and skills by means of reading, studying, teaching, and training methodologies.
2). Transformational learning: The reflection about experiences and the ability to learn from them, sparking changes in thoughts, beliefs, feelings, perspectives, and behaviours.

JOURNAL WRITING GOALS:

As a useful tool, the journal can serve as a stepping stone to numerous goals. There are three significant ones.

Personal Development:
Personal development can be considered the progression from a simpler, lower life stage to a higher, more complex one, one of whose signs is the journalist's ability to reflect upon an experience and construct a new sense of self as a result of it. The mark of this shifting perspective is the person's refocus from what others believe he should feel, think, and want to what he himself believes he should, without regard for their opinion or approval of him. Tantamount to this process is the identification of the thought systems that prove resistant to change.

"Reflecting critically on the assumptions that underlie beliefs and behaviors energize adult development," according to Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 33). "Journal writing is a powerful tool for adults who seek to make meaning and to critically reflect on their lives."

Expressing this dynamic on a deeper level, Piper said, "Growing our souls could be defined as the steady accretion of empathy, clarity, and passion for the good... Our lives are journeys toward a certain kind of wisdom... "

Process Adverse Experiences:

"... Inhibiting traumatic events and feelings over time acts as an ongoing stressor, undermining the body's defenses," according to Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 16). Yet writing about them, particularly in a journal, enables a person to convert disorganized, chaotic, and fight-or-flight adverse experiences into linguistic form, which creates new mental pathways, desensitizes and processes them, and sheds new light and understanding on them. This process can bridge the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind, enabling the person to reclaim gaps or lost memories.

Compose Letters:

Journals provide the opportunities for people to write letters to others, enabling them to express conflicts, hurts, and feelings they could not if the addressee were present, thus promoting the resolution of issues, a sense of healing, and creating possible closure. "Even if never sent," according to Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 150), "letters written to others unburden you by saying the things you want to say, but never would or could... " They can also be written to parts of yourself, your child self, your inner child, your teenage self, your current self, or your future self.

JOURNAL ENTRIES:

Because journal entries are highly individualistic, there is no right or wrong regarding their content, style, length, and format. Nevertheless, there are numerous topic possibilities. Here are ten of them.
1). What's on my mind?
2). What did I learn today?
3). What did I do well today?
4). What could I have done differently?
5). What are my feelings?
6). Why am I angry, frightened, sad, depressed, excited, elated?
7). What would I like to accomplish next week, next month, next year, when I retire?
8). What can I do to grow as a person and challenge myself?
9). What do I value and why?
10). What am I grateful for?

THRESHOLD TO OTHER GENRES:

Because journal writing can be considered an unedited thinking process, it can serve as the foundation for or catalyst to other genre writing, as follows.
-It can be published in its existing form.
-It can form the basis of a short or full-length memoir or autobiography.
-It can provide excerpts for a memoir or autobiography.
-It can furnish ideas for articles, flash fiction stories, short fiction, novels, poems, and/or creative nonfiction pieces.

ULTIMATE PURPOSE:

While journals can serve many purposes, the following quote may capture its ultimate one.
"My journal is like my link to my past activities," concluded Stevens and Cooper (ibid, p. 211). "With my background as an archaeologist, I know that the past is very important in my present. The journal is the historical link to my life. (It) represents life unfolding, days rolling one into the other... My family, my children, even my nieces and nephews, will see who I am and what I did with my life."

Sources:
Stevens, Dannelle D., and Cooper, Joanne E. "Journal Keeping: How to Use Reflective Writing for Learning, Teaching, Professional Insight, and Positive Change." Sterling, Virginia: Styles Publishing, 2009.

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