Gratitude is good but I think journal writing is useful when it is a place to be honest. I think a rant in the journal is better than a rant in the office. Sometimes we need to vent, and a journal can be our therapist.

I wrote in my journal(s) daily for 30 years. Filled 30–40 notebooks with ideas, reflections, occasionally what was going on in my life or my head.

Everyone once in a why there would be stress in my marriage and I would rant, but early on I developed this habit. I would rant on a blank page somewhere apart from the next entry so that I could tear the page out and discard/shred/burn or whatever this venom.

Actually, I would use the rant productively to examine what was really behind the event or feeling that triggered it.

When I started daily blogging in 2007 I took this habit of reflection, of making time to write, and migrated it to the public space which is my blog. I still occasionally “check in” with my journal, but it served its purposes, I believe. One of them was a place to rant.