Why I’m Using a WhatsApp Journal to Process These Uncertain Times
It’s not a perfect system. But the system you use is better than the system you don’t.
I’ve significantly cut back on my social media usage over the past few years, but I still gravitate toward Twitter for breaking news, election returns, and (as I’ve learned recently) updates about global pandemics. One could make a compelling argument that these are three of the least productive and most anxiety-inducing times to check Twitter, but here we are.
In any event, a few weeks ago I came across a Twitter thread that began with this:
I’ve been meaning to start journaling for years. I know how clarifying it is to process the world around me through writing. As I wrote (naturally) in The Writing Cooperative last year, writing is often “a tool to make sense of the thoughts and ideas bouncing around in our brains. A tool to process the endless complexities of life. To bring some order to our questions and doubts, anxieties and inclinations, by distilling them on the page.”
