We Named Our Journal Brain
Journaling is a massive help for people logging their thoughts, important events, and emotions through it all. Traditionally, everyone, including the media, states that journaling is a sole fundamental trait of people who are âintelligentâ or âcreative.â However we donât see it that way, at-least not in a helpful way. Journaling is often portrayed as a daily ritual, filled with important and carefully curated secrets, inner monologues, and logs of events the writer has gone through. While that may be true for some people, for most of us journaling is simply a place to get things off our chest.
The cover of our journal with a tree and antique patterning imprinted into the brown material and a latch on the right side
The biggest issue we personally have with journals isnât the journal in it of itself, itâs keeping up with them. Weâre 100% the only people in the world with this problem (shout out to all the ADHD folks out there haha!) We canât keep up with repetitive tasks or stay on track easily and it causes a lot of problems. But every so often we find a way to compromise for the attention span we lack. Journaling or daily trackers are some of the hardest things for us to keep up with, so theyâre exactly what we wanted to push through and get used!
On our last birthday when we turned 26, our best friend Steph gifted us a journal and a cassette player! At first, we were really nervous about messing everything up one way or another, but we tried really hard to get started. After the third or fourth âhow to journalâ guide, we realized it would be better to just do our own thing. This journal is for our own personal use, so why follow someone elseâs advice when they donât even know our unique situation?
The Cassette and journal Steph gifted to us
For the first step we did, we gave this journal a purpose, which is something we tend to do with most of our belongings. For example, our laptop is designated for entertainment and work, our phone for communication and socializing, and now this journal is a physical space for documenting our emotional processing, rants, life updates, and info dumps (this is beside our personal head-space chats in simply plural haha!)
Secondly, we decided to write in this notebook the same way we would write to a friend, and since we were writing to someone, we gave our notebook a name: Brain. Because we treat Brain like a friend, we never bother dating entries; weâre okay with making grammar or spelling mistakes; and sometimes we even draw little doodles. We only write when we feel like itâitâs never a forced daily task.
Opened Journal to a page of an entry with writing
This has immensely helped us in so many ways! So far, we have cleared up worries by talking them out with Brain, jotted down ideas and plans for the future, and even cried while writing a few times. Talking about things with regular people doesnât always let us be fully honest since we worry about repercussions. However, Brain just listens, and we donât even have to be vocal, which vibes perfectly with our non-vocal side.
Side note: we may or may not have imagined an OC for Brain now haha. We picture him as a sharp, chiseled man with a slight stubble and glasses, dark sunken blue eyes, and short but spiky black hair with bleached tips. He also has visual issues where sometimes everything turns abstract⊠Blame it on our ADHD, but now we have to draw Brain, haha.
Abstract colored piece of how we imagine Brain would look like
Brain feels like a new friend we donât have to babysit. We can tell them about any emotional struggles without fear of judgment, and itâs okay if we leave them alone for a week or twoâthey might even prefer it, haha. Maybe this way of thinking could help you or others who struggle with journaling too?
Let us know in the comments if youâve ever kept up with a journal, and whether youâve ever given, or will give, your journal a name!
-Lily, JackLe, Basil, Sunny2025-8-17