Why Journal?

Journalling for me has never been an easy task. I watch people fall off the journalling wagon every week as they struggle to find something pertinent to write. I myself have struggled hard over the last two years to find some direction in my journalling.  Five years ago my journal initially began as a method to organize my ideas as they pertain to my kung fu. The opportunity and responsibility that earning a black belt brings to a person’s life creates a vortex where ideas, emotions, values, and yes, ego, combine into this intellectual primordial ooze just waiting to be catalogued and recorded. As I kept up with my weekly journalling over the years, my sense of responsibility for the state of the world continued to colour my postings. I found myself drawn into political debates over environmental and foreign policy issues despite never being politically affiliated or inclined. The evolution of my postings were reflecting my own personal evolution. I now realize that this personal evolution would never have taken place if I hadn’t first taken the initiative and begin journalling.

So why has journalling been such a struggle over these past couple of years? I think part of my problem lies in my schizophrenic approach to my journal. I try to make my postings pertinent to my personal convictions, my role as a teacher, and my contribution to the Ultimate Black Belt Test. In my attempt to address all three roles, I tend to not serve any single one of them very well. This has caused me to question the value of my journal.

I struggle to find focus and purpose in my writing and I question the value of my writing. So why do I continue? I think I answered that myself in my first paragraph - I have evolved because of my journalling. I not only care about the problems of the world but I now have a better understanding of why the problems exist, what we’re doing to exasperate the problems, and what I can do to be part of the solution. I am a better, more humble, and more cognizant human being because of what I have learned through my journalling.

Journalling is a tool. It can serve you or you can serve it. These past two years I have been serving my journal. I need to reclaim the process as a tool so it starts to serve me again. The first step is to remind myself that if my journal is serving me it will also serve my students and the UBBT. I need to write for me.
     

“What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary who reads it and invaluable to the student, centuries afterwards, who treasures it.” - Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832)