OpinionAugust 30, 2026 — 5:00amI love a bookstore discount table. I love the randomness of it. A sports star’s memoir sitting next to How to Build a Herb Garden. Waterfalls of the World lying beside a slightly pornographic romance novel that briefly went viral on BookTok before being even more quickly forgotten. I imagine these mismatched genres and titles trying to get along, like bad blind dates set up by the Tinder of underwhelming book sales (Binder?). Awkwardly making small talk and wondering how on earth they ended up together.Attributing human emotions to inanimate objects might seem odd, but really, it’s deeply entertaining. Picture these lonely books, stuck where they lie – the gardening book desperately trying to find common ground with the celebrity memoir, while the sports star only has eyes for the chick lit.The beauty is that there is no witness to how you journal, and there are no rules. Getty ImagesFor me, everything on a discount table has value – they simply haven’t yet found the right person. There’s always one title, laid bare and vulnerable, calling me to give it the home it has always so desperately wanted.My favourite find was a collection of Joan Didion’s non-fiction with a title that spoke directly to me: I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking. “That’s it!” I thought. “That is exactly why I journal.” I had never felt more seen.Not to suggest I possess one skerrick of Didion’s brilliance – as evidenced by another bargain-table purchase called Totally Toned Arms: Get Michelle Obama Arms in 21 Days. (Reader, 21 days later, I did not.)Today’s anxiety leans against tomorrow’s grocery list. A childhood memory rests on top of an email I need to send. A petty whinge is tangled up with a past loss.JO STANLEYBecause I journal every day – I’m not virtue signalling, that would be like boasting that I breathe – and I have an evangelical passion for it, people often ask me why, and how, I do it. Until I read Didion’s words, I never really had an answer. Other than it’s how I make sense of who I am. And the how? Simply, I sit and begin writing before I really know what I have to say.When I first open my notebook (it helps if you love stationery!), my mind is like that bookstore discount table. Today’s anxiety leans against tomorrow’s grocery list. A childhood memory rests on top of an email I need to send. A petty whinge is tangled up with a past loss. The profound sits happily beside the ridiculous.Nothing appears connected but, like that bookshop table, there is no hierarchy of ideas. Because then I keep writing, and meaning emerges. A sentence about work unexpectedly becomes a creative yearning. A frustration with someone reveals itself to be grief. I begin at “I’m tired” and weave my way to a dream I’ve been too scared to acknowledge, even to myself. The page notices things before I do.This space is sacred and safe. I’ve written rage and sorrow. Shame and fear. I’ve emptied out worries that felt too heavy to carry and written love letters to myself about how glorious I am.Here, fears find the memories they belong to, and dreams find their voice. Patterns emerge. I’ve realised I’ve been writing the same lessons in different ways for weeks, and suddenly was freed.That is the power of journalling. Although I absolutely don’t judge if you don’t journal, or if the idea fills you with dread. If words are not your thing, or language has not been your friend, or you’re still traumatised by year 11 English, I can understand why putting pen to paper would feel utterly unnatural. (A hill I will die on: it must be pen to paper. The magic is in the handwriting.)The beauty is that there is no witness to how you journal, and there are no rules. No one will ever read it – maybe not even you. There is no need to be profound or coherent. The words don’t have to make sense. They simply have to be yours.When we write without structure, the process is however we want it to be, and what we write is always perfect because it comes from us. Literally messages from our heart, layer after layer, until eventually, we find ourselves.I journal because when the feelings have flowed through my hand and onto the page, what remains is simply me, free of expectation – mine or anyone else’s. The part of me that just is, now, pure and present. The part that is creative and joyful and curious. The part that loves the wonder of the world and believes new things are possible.This is the person I meet every morning, as I wander through the discount table of my mind. A person who really knows – and likes – herself. And almost every morning, I leave having found exactly what I didn’t know I was looking for.Get the best of Sunday Life magazine delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Sign up for our newsletter.From our partners