Resolving to Keep a Journal

Like many people, I am obsessed with TikTok, specifically the videos that offer a glimpse into whatever lifestyle is creating the most popular aesthetic at a given time. For the past month, the most popular has been the “clean girl aesthetic” which is a collaboration of slicked-back gel buns, soft-nude nails, and almost always a young adult female on a journey of self-growth. The journey was commonly associated with writing in a leather-bound journal that was always in pristine condition: pages unpolluted by human touch except for the perfect penmanship that flowed across the paper as if the words were always there. The exact words that creators wrote were never shown, but there was an overwhelming sense that whatever they were writing reflected them — elegant, graceful, immaculate. These short, thirty-second videos captured a life devoid of mess, and for a stressed college student, I desired intensely to have my life reflect that as well.  

Before leaving for winter break, I picked up a journal at Atticus, determined to begin journaling as my first step towards accomplishing the same self-growth that TikTok influencers claimed to have achieved. If I’m being completely honest, the first week of writing in this journal only exacerbated my already perfectionist attitude. Despite never having the intention to display the pages within this notebook to anyone, I felt as though I was constantly being compared to the standard shown to me in viral TikTok videos. My spelling had to be correct, my punctuation had to be perfect, the ink from my pens could never get smeared, and the pages of my journal had to stay pristine and crisp. This chase after aesthetics grew exhausting. I quickly became frustrated. Why was my writing constantly falling below my expectations? Why was I searching for validation even while writing in a journal?

I would like to say that there was a singular moment that opened my eyes and made me begin to view journaling as an outlet for my emotions rather than a task on a checklist that, once complete, would mean I had successfully cultivated a life that matched the aesthetic I sought after. The actual truth, though, is quite the opposite. There was no perfect moment of realization. The stars did not magically align; instead, there was simply the feeling of being tired. I was tired of the constant and unnecessary comparisons I dragged my writing entries through. I decided to abandon my pursuit of aesthetics. My new goal was just to write. I allowed any contemplation I had to flow onto my journal’s pages, slowly breaking the ‘rules’ I had made for my entries. The black ink was smeared, words were scribbled in an unruly scrawl, I left pages with the corners bent, and stains from whatever residue my hands had on them tainted the paper. Despite these entries being far from the ‘clean’ look I’d sought for so long, writing them was freeing.

The pressure I placed on myself to carefully cultivate these aesthetic journal entries — which were synonymous in my mind with being elegant and unblemished — desensitized me to the entire act of writing and ultimately to the human experience. Humanity is anything but clean. To be human is to be messy and blemished; and, as I am just beginning to grasp, those attributes are signs of a life well lived. Emotions, when fully felt, are raw and messy, and daily challenges in life, whatever those might be for a person, leave bruises on every part of the soul. These experiences are not often captured in a viral TikTok that only features snapshots of the ‘best’ moments, which is why disappointment is ensured when the reality of daily life does not match the perfection of edited media. Putting a huge emphasis on achieving unrealistic expectations is debilitating for the spirit.

I don’t write entries anymore with the hope of them matching the aesthetic that originally drew me in. My journal does not matter to anyone but me and is not filled with eloquent recounts of my day or beautiful pages that depict metaphors that would rival those used by novelists. My journal is an embodiment of myself: the good, the ugly, and everything in between. The leather spine is broken, and some pages have coffee stains or crumbs from a dining hall meal. I find comfort in the thin paper edges that have blue ink marks smudged into their fibers not because the visual would make an aesthetically pleasing TikTok post but because it is tangible proof that I can be authentically myself, even if it is only in my journal’s pages.