As the days shorten and I start to feel I’m losing myself a little bit, I’ve taken some time to read old entries from the journals I’ve kept since I was 13 years old. I can hardly remember a time when I wasn’t inclined to open a notebook, write the date at the top and describe the happenings of that day and what I thought about them. While my first ever entry was essentially just a list of my middle-school insecurities, the habit stuck and evolved into writing down long-winded stories about my experiences, short anecdotes of notable interactions, interesting things people say to me, reviews of what I have been reading, taped-in receipts and tickets, and introspective reflections.
Journaling has shaped my life for the better, and I want to use this op-ed to share how and why I think it is such a valuable practice.
Writing down my life story as it unfolds reminds me that it is worth telling. Placing “narrations” of my days, the “characters” surrounding me and the “subplots” I lead on paper keeps me bound to the greater purpose of living a rich internal and external life. It helps me fight my introverted, sometimes hermit-like instincts; saying yes to a spontaneous road trip or cold-plunge feels more tempting when I know it will mean my journal will be filled with recounts of events rather than mundane reflections on staying in my room.
Having recorded my day-to-day over the years means I can re-immerse myself in obscure segments of my past. When I open to July 2019, I find descriptions of sitting in the backseat of my group Driver’s Ed car, when I gazed out the window at the lowly city streets of Rochester, N.Y., taking mental note of the prettiest houses and feeling sympathy for my classmate with the miles-long legs who had to sit in the cramped middle seat. When school was canceled in the spring of 2020, I apparently spent hours a day watching and thinking about “That 70’s Show” and riding my bicycle around my suburban neighborhood between Zoom classes. In the fall of 2021, I stayed with relatives in the Netherlands and paddle boarded through the narrow canals of the tiny Dutch village where my family owned a water sport shop, waving back to the retirees who sat in their carefully-curated backyards. Like a time capsule, preserving the finer details of memories that may otherwise be lost is endlessly rewarding.
But not every entry from the past nine years is charmingly nostalgic to read. Some are painful. They take me back to times when I wasted energy in the wrong places with the wrong people, made a regrettable choice, or just plainly felt sad. But as many of these moments feel far away, I can both learn from them and remind myself that what I am currently living — and writing — is only a single chapter, and that it will someday enter the rear-view as ink on a page, for better or for worse.
While I can see how I have changed and matured, it is also easy to monitor what has stayed the same, and therefore what defines me when I forget where my edges are. It comforts me to see concrete evidence that the same things have always brought me joy. I have entries from my teenage years romanticizing a college life of interesting classes, living with my best friends, coffee shops and working on a newspaper that is not so far from the one I have now. The curiosity, desire for independence and blunt, situational humor I still carry with me can all be found in the muck of my early writing.
My journals are a place to reflect and express myself without fear of judgment, to work out muddled thoughts I’m unsure of, to consolidate a vague idea or plan on a page and to be as dramatic as I please. Until I have journaled, I feel I am treading water. Once I’ve written out the words that have piled up in my mind, I can steadily stand on shore.
Many of us at Middlebury write, but this writing is almost always intended to be polished, wiped out of our laptops and eventually replaced with something better. If you’ve ever thought about journaling, I encourage you to try it. You will thank yourself for casting your thoughts onto the page and recording your stories in a raw, unchangeable form, conscious of no eyes but your own.
Madeleine Kaptein '25.5 (she/her) is a managing editor.
Madeleine previously served as a staff writer, copy editor and local editor. She is a Comparative Literature major with minors in German and Art History. In Spring 2024, she studied abroad in Mainz, Germany, from where she wrote for the Addison Independent about her host country. In her free time, she enjoys journaling, long walks and runs, and uncomplicated visual arts projects.
