4 ms·
There’s certainly a public form of journaling that happens on social media that seems to start with good intentions but then descends into self-diagnosis. In t
by jl6 4y ago
There’s certainly a public form of journaling that happens on social media that seems to start with good intentions but then descends into self-diagnosis.
In terms of private journaling - well, it’s private, so hard to draw any general conclusions, but I tend to think that if you’re spending more than half an hour each day writing about yourself then you might have a problem.
- hackernewds 4y agoPublic journaling it seems inevitably devolves into glorifying the highlights and seeking attention and acceptance, rather than honesty. Which expectedly the media platforms exploit for engagement metrics.
- mpalmer 4y agoYou pass judgement pretty easily. Private journaling is not always "writing about yourself" in the narcissistic sense you seem to mean. Plenty of people feel like their thoughts and ideas are worthwhile but can't keep track of them without writing them down. Some of them even pass the 30 minute cutoff doing so.
- jl6 4y agoDon’t get me wrong, I’m 100% behind keeping a private journal, even one where you just write about yourself, but you can have too much of a good thing, and I see 30 minutes a day as the reasonable limit.
- helpfulclippy 4y agoYes, and addressing those problems is what I seek to accomplish by writing to myself about them. :) Highly verbose and time consuming journaling has gotten me through divorce, major career changes, single parenthood, relocation, a new relationship and a bunch of other life changes. I usually journal only a few times a week, but in the thick of that stuff, I needed much more than a 30 minute window each day to check in with myself about where I was at and where I was trying to get to each day. Sometimes I spent hours. I took a year and a half away from it — which turned out to be by far one of the most impulsive and reckless periods of my life!