My typical personal journals tend to look like this, in either black, red, or tan leather.

Most introverts enjoy keeping a journal, whether digital or old school paper & pen. Perhaps it’s the slowing down to process a day’s event, detail a dream you don’t want to forget (after waking up), record memories so that you won’t forget events, work through feelings when feeling angry or sad, or even using it for an outlet for complicated emotions like loss, desire, & embarrassment. I cringe even thinking about my teenage journals, & I’m not sure why I keep the evidence of my sappiness in youth… Except that they contain memories & details about my father & brother Dan, who were lost when I was 23 & 28, respectively.

Gifted journals can often have spiffy slogans or quotes on the covers.

Journals can provide inspiration. My best friend Donna made me special journals for each of my study-abroad summers to Oxford & Cambridge, England. She’d find inspiring quotes & thread them through the tops of pages, randomly, so that I’d find neat, pithy kernels of inspiration. There were many movies I’d seen that tinted the world in England–A Room with a View, Emma, Pride & Prejudice, The Enchanted April, Howards End, Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Secret Garden, Peter’s Friends, A Mid-Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night, Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Mansfield Park, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, to name a few.

When I first started at SNHU, I outfitted my desk with all red writing tools & journal.

Journals can help anchor information. Another function of journals for me ties to focus. Admittedly, I’m not great at gleaning information from audio sources, like audio books, people reading directions for things like learning new games, or lectures. Therefore, I have long used note-taking as a way to keep myself engaged & to capture essential information. As studies have shown, when people write information down they are better at recalling it than they would be by even typing the information. There’s something about the hand-eye coordination of writing and the anchoring of the information in the mind, in memory. That’s very much the case for me.

An example of notes I’ve taken during a lecture presentation at work.

Journals can be useful at work. As you can see above, my concern isn’t with keeping pretty handwriting but rather capturing as much information I can during a talk or speaker’s lecture. I’m a visual learner, so journals provide reinforcement for retaining important facts or new material. During video lectures, too, I find that I need to take notes. So, I do go through a number of journals a year, both for personal writing & for work information.

Journals provide introverts with a universal signal of wanting to be left alone.

Journals can become signals. Since introverts tend to feel awkward in large social settings or public places, like a coffee shop, a park, a library, a restaurant–a journal can provide some armor for avoiding unwanted social interaction. When traveling by myself, I’ve found journals tremendously helpful on trains or planes, or even when in a stop-over at an airport. In England, my journal was always with me. I still carry a journal & pen with me most of the time.

Sometimes, journals can also be whimsical, showing some of our quirks.

Journals can act as companions. There’s just something reassuring about having a journal & a pen. Like you always have a friend with you, no matter what. You can pull out your journal & doodle, draw, write poetry, jot down ideas for a story, capture dialog around you, pen lyrics, brainstorm, or re-read things you’ve already recorded in its pages. That can be fun. When you go through old journals, it’s like having a Tardis. You can go back in time & place to a memory long treasured. Like jewels in a chest.

Journals can capture memories. I think that’s my favorite thing about journals & journaling. I can relive a day with my father or brother. I go back in time to experience the sad heartache of unrequited love. I rediscover the wonder of seeing The Matrix for the first time at a theater in Cambridge, England. Or sketching willow trees by the banks of the Cam, while punts float by. Or even experiencing once again a seemingly uneventful day as a teenager, when my dad would bring my mother, brother Dan and me out for ice cream on a summer’s afternoon–all of us piling into his van, “Silver Streak.”

When famous people leave behind journals, we can unearth new knowledge about their private lives, their most intimate thoughts.

Journals can help with research, too. A big part of my dissertation involved reading A.C. Benson’s diaries, which number over fifty in total, kept at the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. I won’ a research fellowship that funded my archival work at the Pepys for the summer of 2006. By the end of my stay, I felt tremendously sad leaving Benson behind. He became like an old friend, as his diaries recorded all of his hopes, insecurities, desires, disappointments, losses, & great loves.

From when I visited A.C. Benson’s residence in Rye, Lamb House (once the beloved home of Henry James).

There are countless reasons for why many introverts love journals, both those they keep & reading those of others. Most introverts are better writers than orators, so finding a small door into one’s mind through reading a journal or a diary can be a true gift. I figure one day someone would want to read mine, even if distant relatives, so I figure it a kind of cultural record of sorts, even if seen through the eyes of a silly sentimental person like me.