Inner Journey Journal

During the first months of my class in English Literature, I wrote a journal every day for ten minutes, where I reflected my feelings and thoughts.  Now that I reflect on it I can see that my writing has change and that my perspective of sitting down just to write it's totally different now. At the beginning of the journal I didn't actually understood how it worked to sit down and just write my thoughts, so what I did was to write of only one subject that I could thing off the whole ten minutes.  But as hard it was for me to just write what I was thinking, I had to do it so then I could achieve the purpose of the journal.  By the course of time I could visualize that I was feeling more comfortable writing and I was not thinking of writing about only one subject. That felt amazing and gave me motivation to keep writing.  Almost at the end I found myself taking the journal and writing everything that cross my mind without stopping my hand.  I really think that there was a huge change since I first started writing my journal.  I felt that I even had confidence writing it and no one could stop me. Sometimes I felt angry so I used that time to relax myself. It was a little time I took from my day only for my journal and me.

 There was a first thought process required for writing a journal.  The process was as follow: Don't cross out, Don't worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, Don't stop, Don't get logical, Don't think, Go for the jugular, Keep your hand moving.  At the beginning of the journal it was extremely hard at least for me to not cross out.  I consider my self a perfectionist, because I want everything I do to be perfect, and when I wrote something wrong I couldn't handle my self to cross out.  Also the part of not worrying about spelling was a little bit difficult because I think every single person focuses on writing correctly.  In my first journals you can see there are some cross outs and that the idea was the same in the whole paragraph.  I found myself thinking too much of what to write and how to develop it, all this thoughts made me not to write continuously.  But I found that during the pass of time this rules help me to change my thoughts and bad habits. I learned to write my feelings and thoughts continuously without thinking if it made any sense or if there were all about the same theme.  In my personal opinion I think this rules were essential for this project, without them I wouldn't had changed my thoughts and relax while writing the journal.

 During the course of the journey journal we were supposed to draw a life compass, which was composed of four parts: spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. I feel that during the pass of time doing the journal my spiritual part felt very open and accessible for different thoughts.  My relationship with God and with my family is very good and did not interrupt in the process of working the journal. In the mental part, there were some days that I felt drained for many reasons, my studies, having a job and not having time for myself, etc. I think this did affect my writing some days, but I learned how to deal with it. In my emotional part, there were some days I felt sad and anxious. I took the MCAT exam and I was waiting for my grade.  This obviously interrupted my writing because everything I could think of was about the MCAT exam. In the physical part, there were some days I felt tired and others hungry, on those days I really did not wanted to sit down and write a journal.  I think that the life compass helped me to stop for a moment and visualize myself. It helped me to see what were the thinks that made me get out of focused while I was writing.  It is an important part of the project and it can show your progress as time passed over.

      All the process of writing daily on my journal helped me so much with my internal journey. It made me think of my surrounding and the thinks I want to do in the future.  My internal journey is described in the course of the journal.  At first I started doing the journals because I had to, but this made me realized that it was actually a good thing to do so I could organize my thoughts.  By the end of the project it was not an obligated thing to do but instead a wanted one.  It was so good to now that when I felt angry I could take my journal and sit down and take every out of me! It was a relief and I automatically felt happy and my day could continue normally. My journey journal helped me to know that I really knew what I wanted in my life and that not only because everything does not come out the way I expected does not mean that everything is ruined.  Your plans continue the way they were you only have to keep studying and working hard and you will be granted with your most beautiful price: accomplishing your goal.

      I posted some pictures of my journey journal where you can see a collage of different journeys of my life. My friends and family are present too. These pictures helped me during the project because it was very gratifying every time I wrote a journal and I saw them; they motivated me. I would recommend everyone to make a journal; it helps you to get to know yourself even better. And if you feel lost and without a journey it helps you find yourself. So get up, take a notebook, and don't think just write!