Do You Keep All Your Ranting Journals?

[Pussinboots]

This came up before when I posted about cheap vs fancy journals. I am finding still that I can't just offload the same in very pretty journals (like Paperblanks) and I am still censoring what I write. I may find it easier with a good quality notepad where I can tear sheets out after if I want to destroy any entries and keep the ones I want to save.

 

This morning I woke up feeling low and aggitated about various things, so I took my journal out with me to write but the anger wouldn't come out, I was just glossing over everything and making it sound 'polite' incase anyone should read it.

 

I need to offload on paper, its how I cope with things but I do worry about keeping it and that takes away the whole point of journaling.

 

 

[PenPaper52]

 

 

Pussinboots I think I know where you're coming from. You are right to be cautious.

I had a really nice journal many moons ago that I used for venting. I couldn't bring myself to taking the entries out. Thought it would be a shame to destroy the look of it.

 

Long story short...after a move, my now ex-husband found the journal and read it. Never said that he'd seen or read it...but in a let's say heated discussion he used what he had read against me.

[pajaro]

Pussinboots I think I know where you're coming from. You are right to be cautious.

I had a really nice journal many moons ago that I used for venting. I couldn't bring myself to taking the entries out. Thought it would be a shame to destroy the look of it.

 

Long story short...after a move, my now ex-husband found the journal and read it. Never said that he'd seen or read it...but in a let's say heated discussion he used what he had read against me.

 

For exactly this reason I keep no such journal, lest my wife should read it and misinterpret what she might read. I had considered keeping a journal to record some things that have happened in my life, but I then realized that my mind will be the best repository, and no doubt it will be the safest one..

Edited January 14, 2017 by pajaro

[inkstainedruth]

I keep mine. My journals are for whatever comes out my brain and through my hand on any given morning. Warts and all. And rants are a part of it. They're cathartic.

Anybody gets their hands on them and reads them, and doesn't like what I've said about them? That's on them.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Sailor Kenshin]

This came up before when I posted about cheap vs fancy journals. I am finding still that I can't just offload the same in very pretty journals (like Paperblanks) and I am still censoring what I write. I may find it easier with a good quality notepad where I can tear sheets out after if I want to destroy any entries and keep the ones I want to save.

 

This morning I woke up feeling low and aggitated about various things, so I took my journal out with me to write but the anger wouldn't come out, I was just glossing over everything and making it sound 'polite' incase anyone should read it.

 

I need to offload on paper, its how I cope with things but I do worry about keeping it and that takes away the whole point of journaling.

 

Sometimes, I'll do it on junk paper, then change my mind and washi-tape the paper to the back of a page (I use comp notebooks, and one-side-only, which is handy for paper transfers). Short answer: I keep mine, but I rant out loud every chance I get.

[The Good Captain]

In answer to your original question - yes I do. Really good therapy.

[Studio97]

An occasional rant gets into my journals. I do try to write about the problem or issue in a sort of objective way to help solve it or at least be able to cope with it. I accept what I can't change but I've also learned that journaling can help with life changing decisions like a job change, career change and recently retirement and a move into part time working hours. My writings about that decision could have been a rant about my situation at that time. But instead be more objective and develop a plan. Unloading alone may help to cope but not solve anything. And I keep all my journals. I need another large case to store them in. Most of all I want them to survive long after I'm gone. Maybe someone will benefit someday with learning about day to day life by reading them. Anyone including family can identify with even "the dull and routine stuff" in a journal and more so with the more intense events I have written about. Keep all of it. It's part of who we are and what we have experienced.

[inkandseeds]

Yes, i rant in my journals, but not often. It releases the anger and frustration, it helps me solve the problem. I also have kept all my journals. I trust my wife not to read them and even if she did it is likely she would be bored to death before she found a rant about her.

[bogiesan]

Journalling is, by definition, totally customized, highly personalized practice. If you're afraid of someone finding your notebooks and reading them, you either censor yourself mercilessly or you protect your notebooks as carefully as you protect your purse, wallet, credit cards, and iPhone.

[Pussinboots]

Thanks for all your replies. I never used to worry about this, I used to just write what I wanted and thought what the hell. Now I still need to write and I don't mind if I write in my journal that I am annoyed with someone or what the problem is, but when it comes to ranting I don't know what to do. I recently have this bugbear about a friend who has back pedalled on something she promised for the second time and her excuses just don't wash and don't make sense, I need to offload, but if I put all the rants, the whys and wherefores in my journal, later when I have got over the situation will I look back at it and feel awful about what I wrote? Whereas writing the ranting on loose paper and writing in my journal what the resolution is maybe a better bet? How do you all do it?

[Sailor Kenshin]

Thanks for all your replies. I never used to worry about this, I used to just write what I wanted and thought what the hell. Now I still need to write and I don't mind if I write in my journal that I am annoyed with someone or what the problem is, but when it comes to ranting I don't know what to do. I recently have this bugbear about a friend who has back pedalled on something she promised for the second time and her excuses just don't wash and don't make sense, I need to offload, but if I put all the rants, the whys and wherefores in my journal, later when I have got over the situation will I look back at it and feel awful about what I wrote? Whereas writing the ranting on loose paper and writing in my journal what the resolution is maybe a better bet? How do you all do it?

See Post #5.

[Newjelan]

I rant in mine when the mood takes me. I also shred my journals after about a year. I started doing that because I'd look back at them and find them boring. 🙄

[Bluey]

I don't keep them because it's not necessary. Nobody can read my writing in my journal anyway, not even me. Why would anyone want to keep their rants anyway? What would you get out of reading them again months or years down the line?

Rants are just spur of the moment thoughts and emotions. When you've got your rant out of your system in your journal it's served its purpose in helping you move towards a solution to an issue, helping to clarify things in your mind, or sometimes just to unload it from your mind to feel calmer.

Then the past is best forgotten to think about the future.

 

Rants in journals are essentially like spent cartridges. If you're bothered about anyone reading it then write in scrawl so nobody can.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Bluey

[PAKMAN]

I keep my journals but rarely do I rant, on paper or otherwise.

[Pussinboots]

I don't keep them because it's not necessary. Nobody can read my writing in my journal anyway, not even me. Why would anyone want to keep their rants anyway? What would you get out of reading them again months or years down the line?

Rants are just spur of the moment thoughts and emotions. When you've got your rant out of your system in your journal it's served its purpose in helping you move towards a solution to an issue, helping to clarify things in your mind, or sometimes just to unload it from your mind to feel calmer.

Then the past is best forgotten to think about the future.

 

Rants in journals are essentially like spent cartridges. If you're bothered about anyone reading it then write in scrawl so nobody can.

 

Hi, I do agree regarding rants and angry writings but what about where you have worked out a problem or written something negative but not a rant, isn't it good to keep it to look back on to see how far you've come and coped with things? Out of interest, what goes into your journal? I keep a diary for appointments so can look back on events in that way so I journal when the mood takes me so its not a daily record.

[Bluey]

 

Hi, I do agree regarding rants and angry writings but what about where you have worked out a problem or written something negative but not a rant, isn't it good to keep it to look back on to see how far you've come and coped with things? Out of interest, what goes into your journal? I keep a diary for appointments so can look back on events in that way so I journal when the mood takes me so its not a daily record.

The solutions to issues gets written elsewhere. The journal is just a scratchpad for me. I don't feel the need to write down how far I've come - such stuff is held up here (points to bonce).

 

My journal uses crappy cheap paper to write down:

-rants as when necessary, and reflections/analysis/etc of them to work out a solution

-positive things that have happened in the day and reflections on them

-analysing any issues

-learning current affairs (reading news and current affairs articles and then writing down all that I remember)

-analysis of current affairs

-anything that's on my mind at the time

 

Everything gets written quickly with no regard to spwlling, grammar, or legibility. Not even I can read my own handwriting, so I have no qualms about saying everything.

Edited January 18, 2017 by Bluey

[PaganArcher]

I have one journal that I exclusively use for ranting and venting. I keep them for one year and one day, tossing it into a fire on the morning of January 2nd each year.

[gmm213]

My journal is a place to rant. It allows me to take it out on paper rather than people. I keep mine mainly so i can go back and re read them to see how i resolved an issue and improve the next time a similar one arises. Someone reads it and doesn't like it, too bad. Deal with it

[sandy101]

Journals are for rants. You don't need to read them again.

 

If filling a Paperblank with rants bothers you, but a cheap A5 journal from Sainsbury's or Clas Ohlson and make this your angry rant book.

 

If you feel it's a bad thing, you can do a ritual at New Year when you burn the pages and start a new one for the following year.

 

"We shed our sickness in books." If that's good enough for DL Lawrence, then it's good enough for me.

[Bookman]

I keep mine. My journals are for whatever comes out my brain and through my hand on any given morning. Warts and all. And rants are a part of it. They're cathartic.

Anybody gets their hands on them and reads them, and doesn't like what I've said about them? That's on them.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

Hear, hear. If my journals were simply rants I probably wouldn't bother writing them, I'd just yell in the shower. Everything and the kitchen sink can go into my whatever-it-is, and my journaling gets wrapped up into it. It's also a diary and thus a chronology of events, my first stop when I need to refresh my recollection about something that happened months or years earlier about which the details have become a bit fogged-in. Whatever happened, chances are that I wrote something about it.