[honzabe]

I hope you won't mind if I use the term "journaling" in its broadest sense as anything written about events of my life.

1. I write a training journal that consist of .fit files with extensive notes in .txt files - how I felt during and after the training (including things like "I discovered a new road next to a river, it was beautiful" or "I kept thinking about X and I was pissed), what I ate and how I slept that day, that I was observing swallows flying and that it made me feel good for some reason... writing a journal like this forces you to pay attention to little things. You notice patterns, maybe little signs of overtraining, signals that it is going well, connections that you might otherwise miss, like "I have elevated heart rate every time I eat poppy seed cookies"...

2. when I have something on my mind, I write it as an email for "someone close". This started during a difficult but interesting period in my life when I was actually sending emails to my close friend (we were on different continents and it was before Skype, mobile phones etc. - emails were the only connection we could have at the time). Nowadays I sometimes just write what is happening in my life without sending it to anyone but I usually still think about it as if I am writing to a friend. What is great about it is that this somehow re-frames heavy stuff into a funny story - it works even at the very moment when you are living through something tough; instead of just being depressed or scared you are already formulating in your head how you will write that email later and somehow your perspective changes into something a lot more positive - at least in my case it works like that.