5 Ways to Deepen Your Diary Practice in the New Year

"a man loves to review his own mind"

As the new year approaches, I find myself returning to one of my favorite topics: diaries—and how to use them for deeper self-reflection. So, here is a second installment of ways to keep a diary. As I wrote, a diary is a gift you give your future self. It’s a form of devotion, a way to reclaim a bit of quiet in a world that often feels too noisy. And, to quote Joan Didion, “it’s good to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be.”

If your diary habit needs reviving—or, if you’d like to begin one—check out the following ways to fill a diary for greater self-reflection.

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1) Note your “Devotions”: Samuel Johnson’s Prayers and Devotions

The literary giant of the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson, actively encouraged friends to keep diaries. He praised journaling as the best tool to record the most important thing: “the state of your own mind.” What could possibly be more interesting than that? After all, he wrote,

…a man loves to review his own mind.¹

Johnson regularly noted down his resolutions—often on the New Year, Easter, or his birthday. He recorded the following resolutions on his 59th birthday:

SEPT 18. 1760. Resolved D.j.

To combat notions of obligation

To apply to Study.

To reclaim imagination²

To consult the resolves on Tetty’s coffin.

To rise early.

To study Religion.

To go to Church.

To drink less strong liquours.

To keep Journal.

To oppose laziness, by doing what is to be done.

To morrow

Rise as early as I can.

Send for books for Hist. of war.

Put books in order.

Scheme life.

Samuel Johnson - Prayers and Meditations, Oxford University, Pembroke College PMB/V/2/3/19

Your version might be simpler, but there’s nothing so easy as writing out resolutions. And, as Johnson knew, there’s nothing quite so difficult as keeping them. I could easily write a post in January on all the resolutions famous creative people failed to meet.

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2) Face Difficult Things: Audre Lorde’s Cancer Journal

After a double mastectomy, the poet and scholar Audre Lorde began recording her experiences with cancer. It was her way of combating fear, of owning her own body and the process of dying. She writes,

Sometimes fear stalks me like another malignancy, sapping energy and power and attention from my work. A cold becomes sinister; a cough, lung cancer; a bruise, leukemia. Those fears are most powerful when they are not given voice, and close upon their heels comes the fury that I cannot shake them.

As Lorde explains, writing the “Cancer Journals” transformed silences into language. This was, in effect, the thrust of her entire scholarly and literary career: voicing the unvoiced and opening up difficult conversations.

Lorde’s practice invites us to see journaling as a way to break through silences and to confront conversations we have been avoiding.

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3) Psychoanalytic Journals: Louise Bourgeois

The sculptor Louise Bourgeois spent three decades in psychoanalytic treatment and filled over a thousand loose pages with psychoanalytic notes. As her friend, Gary Indiana wrote, these notes are

Drastically unfiltered, they emanate from the most defenseless part of the writer’s brain.³

Deeply personal, she wrote these note for herself and for her analyst.

The boxes where she stored her notes, Louise Bourgeois Archive, New York, and the Easton Foundation

Bourgeois’s notes are rarely linear or tidy. After all, she meant them to be the unfiltered wanderings of her own mind, as she writes in a note from 1958:

The analysis is a jip is a trap is a job is a privilege is a luxury is a duty is a duty towards myself my husband. my parents my children my is a shame is a farce is a love affair is a rendez-vous is a cat + mouse game is a boat to drive is an internment is a joke makes me powerless makes me into a cop is a bad dream is my interest is my field of study—is more than I can manage makes me furious is a bore is a nuisance is a pain in the neck⁴

On another sheet of paper, Bourgeois lists her desires:

A loose sheet in English, circa 1962, Louise Bourgeois Archive, New York, and the Easton Foundation

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4) Track Your Moods: Jack Kerouac’s Mood Log

Tracking one’s moods is nothing new. In fact, Jack Kerouac set out to trace his moods over the course of a writing project in March 1947. He explains his rational:

In an effort to discover the hidden laws of elation & depression while writing.

Here, he records his feelings while writing. They range from

Perfect assurance and spiritual poise; all things fell in place

to

A “whats-the-use” day.

Kerouac Series 3: Journals, NYPL

Creative projects often trigger emotions. And while there is no shortage of digital mood trackers out there, I personally love Kerouac’s old-fashioned analogue method.

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5) Draw Your Inner World: Carl Jung’s Mandalas

During World War I, Carl Jung began to draw circular, symmetrical shapes called mandalas. He had learned about them through his studies of Indian religions. Mandalas have historically been associated with spiritual, meditative practices.

Drawing from these ancient traditions, Jung sketched a mandala every morning. He saw it as a way to explore his inner-state through art. He explained:

I sketched every morning in a notebook a small circular drawing, a mandala, which seemed to correspond to my inner situation at the time… Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: … the Self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well, is harmonious.⁵

He began to notice the symmetry—or lack thereof—in his drawings. When everything was well, his mandalas were more symmetrical.

The first in the series of Jung’s mandalas, from August 2nd 1917. The Red Book, Appendix A

My mandala images were cryptograms on the state of myself, which were delivered to me each day.⁶

What if your diary had visual representations of your internal world? How would they look?

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In the end, what matters is carving out some stillness and returning to yourself on the page. It’s not always the easiest thing to do, but I never regret a diary entry. Whenever I read past entries, I’m grateful to the younger versions of myself that left behind traces of thought that I can pick back up and turn over in my older, wiser, mind.

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I imagine many of you have developed your own diary practices. I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Yours in Note-Taking,

P.S. Paid Subscribers, look out for a post filled with diary-keeping templates crafted from the figures covered in Noted.

And if you’ve been thinking of upgrading, now is a good time as I’m offering 20% off paid subscriptions.

1. Quoted in Johnson, Samuel. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Edited by E.L. McAdam, vol. 1, Yale University Press, 1958. Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784. Works. 1958 , p. xi.

2. Editors suggest that “imaginations” here refers to sexual fantasies. They do not appear in his diaries prior to his wife, Tetty’s death.

3. Gary Indiana. “ThePsychoanalytic Writings of Louise Bourgeois.” Hauser & Wirth, https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/25821-gary-indiana-psychoanalytic-writings-louise-bourgeois/.

4. Quoted in Indiana. Loose sheet of writing, c. 1958 [LBB-0127].

5. Cited in Jung, C. G. Mandala Symbolism: (From Vol. 9 Collected Works). Princeton University Press, 2017, p. v.

6. Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1965, p. 220.