Dear Diary, Today I...

Finding the right words about … Today | November journal challenge 📖

just trying to find the right words.

When I first started keeping a diary as a child, I thought I had to write like how I saw people write on TV. Ginger from As Told By Ginger and Doug (the Nickelodeon version, not Disney!) and Moesha would always end their day in the pages of their diary or journal recounting the events of the day, down to even the dialogue. 

i really wanted to be Ginger, high key.

To be a good diarist, it seemed you had to write everything down and I tried to do the same. I would start by writing down “Dear Diary, today…” and then I’d try to remember all the details about what happened to me throughout the day at school and at home. It was a really frustrating task that felt more like homework, like I had to make a report of what had already happened so that whoever read the pages would completely understand my life. I had to keep a diary like they did on TV. 

But I wasn’t on a TV show. My journal wasn’t for a live-studio audience to understand my life. It was for me to understand my own life, my feelings, my triggers, my hopes and my needs. I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone in the pages of my journal, I could write about what I wanted and what I wanted was to write less about the things that had happened, and more about how those things made me feel. 

I wanted to use my journal to understand myself. And when I stopped worrying so much about doing things the “right way” and I started documenting my own feelings, my disappointments, and my excitement in the pages of my notebooks, that’s when I really started to develop a daily journaling habit and I could get a clearer picture of what was really going on in my life. 

Your journal is for you. It’s a place where you can be completely yourself, be vulnerable about your feelings, and hopefully gain more understanding about your emotions. With that said, in November, I want to get back to my journaling basics and write about how my day is really going.

November 2024 journal prompts.

Every Friday in November, I’m going to try to write about my day. Specifically, and the various things I learn, feel, want, and need throughout the day.

To follow along, fill in the blank for the journal prompts above and then simply explain what’s going on in your heart and mind. How do you feel? What do you want? What do you need? What do you already have to be grateful for? What are you learning and what do you now know? What do you deserve that you haven’t said out loud? What will you do today? What needs to happen for today to be a great day? We’ll figure it out and write it out in the pages of our journals. 

There are seven prompts in this journaling challenge. You can use these prompts to start your day or review your day in the evenings. You can write to any or all of these prompts every day! Or just one prompt every single day (that’d be such a cool challenge! If you do that, chat me and let me know which prompt you choose to dedicate your month to!) I’ll be sharing an entry every Friday right here on Finding The Right Words.

Remember “there’s no right or wrong way to journal, you just have to find the right words.” And when you can’t find the right words, just write what you feel. How you feel is enough.

Thank you for being here! Before you go:

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