By: Staff Contributor
You know that feeling? That quiet little spark of joy when you actually pick up a real pen, feel the paper cool and smooth under your fingers? I felt it again just the other day, just sitting down to write something down. And I was instantly whisked back. Back to the good old days when journaling wasn't just a thing I did sometimes, but a total lifeline, a daily must-do that felt exactly like therapy.
where else can you unload those thoughts you just can't say out loud to anyone? Some things, some feelings, they're just better kept tucked away, aren't they? But you can spill absolutely everything to your diary – your deepest fears, your most embarrassing moments, the crazy ideas bouncing around your head. It's this completely private space where you can be, well, messy. Contradictory. Fully, gloriously, and totally you, with zero fear of judgment.
And honestly, there’s something almost magical about writing by hand, at least for me. When my pen hits the paper, it’s like a switch flips. Suddenly, I feel a bit like a poet, or at least someone who can actually string a sentence together halfway decently. My thoughts just seem to flow better, faster even, and that annoying little editor in my brain takes a break. There’s a rhythm to it, a connection between my brain and my hand and the ink appearing on the page that just doesn't happen when I'm hammering away on a keyboard. It's smooth, uninterrupted, a different kind of mental groove.
But okay, real talk, there was a point where the privacy thing started to get to me. That little voice whispering, "what if someone finds these?" All my secrets, just out there? The thought of it being discovered while I'm still around? Yeah, way scarier than after I'm gone. I mean, then, what would it even matter? But the idea of facing someone who had read the complete, unedited, unfiltered version of me? The parts I usually keep under lock and key? Terrifying. I figured they'd never look at me the same way again. So, for a while, I pulled back from writing about every single thing I did and focused more on just, you know, the feelings of it all.
Funnily enough, that shift – born out of a bit of anxiety – ended up being incredibly freeing. Just letting the emotions flow onto the page, raw and unedited, without trying to make them sound nice or sensible or anything other than what they were? It was liberating. And no, those thoughts weren't always dramatic or dark. Often, they were just the quiet, everyday things we keep private – a silly worry, a fleeting crush, a moment of pure, unadulterated happiness. The stuff that feels too small, too weird, or too vulnerable to share, even with people we love and trust completely. And honestly? That's okay. We don't owe anyone access to every corner of our minds. If anything, over-sharing can sometimes mess things up.
Anyway, getting back to it, that feeling of putting pen to paper again? It just made me feel so... alive. It had been ages since I’d written anything by hand that wasn't a grocery list or maybe scribbling down someone's address when my phone wasn't around me. Picking up that notebook felt like reconnecting with something fundamental, almost like going back to nature. Typing feels efficient, sure, but it lacks that tactile connection, that groundedness you get from handwriting.
Everything is going digital now. And while there's no denying the convenience, some things just feel better, more real, experienced in their original form. Like reading a book. I'll take the weight of the paper, the smell of the pages, the simple act of turning them over staring at a screen any day. Maybe it's just because I grew up with physical books before e-readers were even a thing, but the traditional way just feels right.
And speaking of digitalization, there's the whole AI situation. It's creeping into everything, Writing included. It's getting seriously hard to tell if something was written by a person or a machine. We're already leaning on it so much, and I can't help but think we're going to get even more comfortable, maybe even a little lazy, in the next few years.
Sure, AI is amazing for getting things done fast, saving time and brainpower, and it's going to change so much. But are we risking stopping our own growth, our own learning, by handing off the tasks that actually make us think and research and grapple with ideas? An AI is only as good as the person using it, after all. It's a tool, but it doesn't have the lived experience, the messy, beautiful humanity that fills the pages of a handwritten journal.