Why Journal?

I don't journal very often these days. I don't have a daily routine or evening ritual, but I do have a journal. It's my safe harbor to record things I don't want to forget—things that don't belong anywhere else. And it's an important part of my life.

What are these things?

• Ideas: They come to me while showering, reading, scrolling social media, traveling alone ¹, or even in the middle of the night. Sometimes it’s an app idea or a random thought I can't shake off.
• Emotional Episodes: Work or life moments that hit me emotionally. Negative thoughts about a project, reflections after a family conflict, grief after a loss, or celebrations of achievements—anything that leaves an emotional imprint.
• Thoughts: In high school or college, I had more time for free-floating thoughts in class. I'd daydream about the future, reflect on the present, or wrestle with overwhelming feelings about someone or something.

Where do they belong?

Most of these thoughts are private or fleeting. They're not meant for social media or public forums, and they're not attached to a specific project or topic for a note-taking app. A journal offers a private channel without worrying about oversharing or judgment.

More than anything, these are bound to time—I date and timestamp them. As I realized back in high school, what I write flows away with time, and the words I leave behind are just residual traces of that moment. I don't need perfection, either—typos included ². I'm simply trying to capture the feeling and puzzle pieces that occupied my mind then. Like streams of thoughts flowing through me, I write them down as a stream of words.

Philosophers and psychologists have long argued that our thinking is intertwined with language (the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis, Lev Vygotsky on “Inner Speech”). We see language’s power in modern AI, where large language models mirror human perception in a stream of words…

This is why I’m not a fan of journaling apps that prompt mood questions and track trends. They might work for some, but I want my raw thoughts, not a series of quantitative prompts.

Why do I journal?

Once I convert these thoughts into a stream of words, I have a private, timestamped log I can read top-to-bottom ³, tag, and search. Do I look back all the time? Not really—only occasionally.

The main joy is the relief: as soon as I write down a looping thought, my mind can finally let it go. My brain no longer needs to scream at me to remember—it’s captured. I may return to it if I want, but it’s no longer a burden, so I’m free to start a new stream.

But there’s also a bit of magic: if I ever want to revisit that state of mind, I can reboot that moment through these words. It’s like a cheap way to time travel ⁴. I may be sitting on my couch now, but reading old entries brings me back to high school me, to those thoughts about the future or the sense of being trapped by the present. In that moment, my past self merges with who I am now, sometimes in a way that lingers for weeks—truly magical.

Why ZenJournal?

I’ve written a separate post on the "Why" of ZenJournal, but here’s the bridge: to me, a journal is a way to capture the stream of my thoughts into a stream of words. It must be private and secure (so I feel safe writing anything), simple and fast (so I’m not distracted), searchable (so I can hop around the timeline), and continuous in chronological order (so I can truly travel back and relive that moment). If this sounds useful to you, I hope ZenJournal helps.

Footnotes