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At the start of 2026, I found myself wanting to journal—to compress an entire day into a few paragraphs, the way one tries to squeeze order out of chaos and hopes no one notices the excess spilling out the sides.
I wanted to do this in the name of organization. Because, if I’m being honest, a few years back I started losing my drive for almost everything. Teaching included. I was often late. My lesson plans looked like they had been assembled by a tired version of myself five minutes before class—which, to be fair, usually were. Motivation felt optional.
My health, meanwhile, was not exactly what doctors (I would think) would describe as reassuring. Some days, I felt like a lowly mammal navigating a dispirited environment, surviving mostly on habit and obligation. I hoped journaling—evaluating thoughts and activities one page at a time—might help me recalibrate. Maybe realign with whatever purpose I misplaced along the way. Experience, after all, tells me hindsight is 20/20, especially when you bother to write things down.
Mind the Mental
According to an article by the National Library of Medicine, Positive Affect Journaling (PAJ)—an emotion-focused, self-regulation intervention—has been linked to reduced mental distress and improved well -being.
As a middle-aged man who prefers not to compute how deep he already is into his thirties, I initially took a different route. I thought buying things might help. Game consoles—plural. New clothes. Bike upgrades. The usual adult attempt at “healing the inner child”.
Turns out, a pen, an old notebook, and a stubborn need to organize the idiosyncrasies of my thoughts did more for me than all those shiny upgrades combined. The consoles were fun, yes—but mostly as buffers. Temporary distractions stacked neatly on top of a boredom that kept finding ways to resurface.
Beginning Anyway
I started 2026 slowly. Drunk on a steady stream of alarming flood control news, perpetually irritated by the ultra-annoying mug of Antonio Mangusin, and neck-deep in the familiar thoughts of a tired adult wondering when things got this heavy, I somehow decided to pace myself toward something productive.
Journaling became one of those things. Not aggressively. Just enough to show up at the page, even when the day didn’t feel particularly write-worthy.
I came across TikTok threads where people proudly display stacks of journals—years’ worth of documented lives, some stretching back a full decade. It’s intimidating, seeing people half your age seemingly having their lives together, archived neatly in aesthetic notebooks, already preparing for a guided adulthood while you’re still trying to remember where you put your sense of direction.
Ali Abdaal shared that journaling helps us solve problems by laying them all out—letting us see the full equation. And maybe that’s the point. As a middle-aged man, zoning out from the noise and zooming out from the moment feels necessary. Perspective doesn’t solve everything, but it does make things manageable. It makes demons feel beatable. Or at least negotiable.
Only a month into journaling, I’ve noticed a shift. I’ve become more intentional with my daily routine—not because I want to impress anyone, but because I want to write a better journal entry than yesterday’s.
I think I’m doing this to be a better teacher. A better husband. A better father. A better son.
And maybe, most importantly, a better version of myself—hopefully improving, without metrics, without applause, and very much in the absence of a like button.
