You’re Doing Journaling Wrong. And So Was I.

Born in Bulgaria in 1984, I took my first conscious steps in a world that was the ultimate political wreck. Bulgaria was saying goodbye to its long-term relationship with Russian values and looking to absorb some new, western capitalist ideologies. We called it “the transition to democracy”, not knowing we were about to create real-life satire. But that’s beyond the point.

People had no idea how to act. Should they still abide by the rules of the old social structures and look after each other, or was this the moment to shift towards a self-centred, exclusively money-driven approach?

Because of the rapid shifts and shaky values, though, everyone was quite confused. No one knew what was right or wrong anymore. The fabric of society was changing and the weave was unpredictable. Our grandparents clung to the old ways, whilst our parents wanted something new and different, and the political elite promised endless innovation.

As kids, we were confused too. We listened to endless conversations bashing regimes we barely understood. The only thing we did know was that the two generations couldn’t agree on anything.

And so, at quite an early age, I turned to writing to find my own answers.

Cat Gate

The trigger was embarrassingly specific: our cat escaped. An event I relentlessly blamed my mother for.

I was 8 or 9. My mother opened the door for a neighbour, the cat shot out and bolted down the stairs to the basement, and then to the upside down. Or somewhere else we simply couldn’t find her.

Heartbroken, I refused to accept it was an accident. I pulled out a notebook and let my dark thoughts leak into the ink and down the page. That felt weirdly satisfying. So I did it again the next day. A few days later the cat was still missing, so I kept writing.

It turned out I feel a strange satisfaction drawing shapes that also carry meaning. Over the next two weeks I returned to that journal every chance I got, and hid it religiously whenever I wasn’t writing, just in case my mother found it. Because of the cat accident I thought her careless and didn’t want her to see that I’ve described her like that to my new “friend”.

Years later I’d realise she was probably 28 or 29 at the time, still very much a child herself. Carelessness would have been completely normal.

Two weeks later, a knock on the door announced the return of the wandering Samantha – found hiding in a basement in a nearby block. We still had that communal spirit then. Everyone within five blocks knew our cat was missing and exactly what to look for.

And then, just as suddenly as I’d started, I stopped writing.

The Western Frameworks Arrive

Fast forward a few years, and I started stumbling upon the almighty western frameworks, pre-designed by some fame-thirsty individual wrapped in (often fake) academic steam. Journaling frameworks included. I can’t remember exactly what they were – but I’m certain there was something about gratitude, goal setting, and math. You know how western frameworks are: they somehow always need everything reduced to an achievement, or it doesn’t count. Nothing is ever done simply for the pleasure of it.

Did I fall for it? Absolutely.

I don’t know exactly how or when it happened, but one day I was fully convinced that everything worth doing was in service of a goal. That you shouldn’t move a finger unless you were chasing a measurable outcome. And that one doctrine (that everything must be quantifiable to have value) led me to the complete abandonment of so many hobbies over the years.

The biggest casualty was journaling.

Having grown to resent doing it on someone else’s rhythm (a.k.a. the frameworks), I stopped writing altogether.

But I missed it.

Morning Pages, and Why They Failed Me Too

When I stumbled upon The Artist’s Way and cried my way through the audiobook, I thought it was time to go back.

But Julia Cameron’s morning pages were yet another framework. A gentler one. The invitation was simply to start writing, move your hand, let the words come even if what arrived was complete jabbering. No rules beyond that.

And yet I failed at that too.

I just couldn’t always write in the morning. Sometimes I had to be up at five to hit the road, or at six to take someone to the hospital. Sometimes I’d been up all night with a sick pet and was desperately trying to glue myself back together with coffee by seven.

Morning pages required mornings. My mornings were not available on demand.

What Actually Worked

A few months later, something was eating me up from the inside. A working environment so toxic I had to find a way to cope without exploding.

Thankfully, my soul remembered the missing cat. My instinct was to reach for a notebook.

This time, though, I put two and two together. As a busy adult, I needed some version of a loose intention when journaling, particularly on the days when my brain felt deep-fried and then pickled: mushy and sour at the same time. So, I started doing three pages a day but stopped caring when I did them. Sometimes it was three sentences at a time, multiple times a day. Sometimes it wasn’t three pages at all – barely half. None of that mattered.

I had come back to journaling. And negative thoughts left my system the moment they touched the page.

What the Science Said All Along

Around this time, I started genuinely trying to understand how journaling works — what its actual purpose is, beyond the frameworks and the money-making wellness industry that had grown up around it.

Turns out the scientific world had known all along: the point of journaling is to be an outlet for your emotional world, in the same way that exercise is an outlet for your physical body. It quite literally keeps you healthy; measurably, physiologically healthy. The research on this is three decades old and consistent. I just hadn’t known to look for it.

With that in mind: some people will always prefer frameworks, just as some prefer structured exercise classes or pre-designed routines. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But freehand, longhand writing (honest, unstructured, at whatever time of day you can manage) will always be the equivalent of walking. You can lift weights, stretch for hours, track every macro. But if your body isn’t fit enough for a long walk, your efforts are purely aesthetic.

Journaling works the same way. You can follow every framework you like. But if you’re not putting honest thoughts on the page, unstructured, unjudged, in your own time and your own words, you’re exercising for the mirror, not for the body.