Sometimes life gets in the way and if we’re busy we actually forget what we have done or how we felt after doing an activity or even the outcome of our actions. So this is why I started journaling this year. I began more out of interest than anything else to see if I could establish a pattern as to how my thoughts work and how I manage and react to events in my life, including all events, happy, sad, work or home related, family, faith and friends.

I’m unsure if lockdown has affected my memory, hope not, but each day, weeks and months are rolling into one and sometimes I forget what I did with my time. I do hear my friends say the same thing so then I don’t feel so bad. This is where journaling has been helpful to me. Once every few weeks I read and re-read what I have written. After doing this last week one word that I used often was struggle.

I asked myself why was I using this word so often and my reply was it’s because I do struggle at times and writing it down helps me to process the reason in my mind and work towards a solution to enable me to move on.

There are of course many different struggles in life, ones that have never touched me and mine may have not touched others, but one thing is certain particularly this year with lockdown, isolation has been a struggle for many. When I look at the word struggle I feel I have two options, to dwell on it and make myself miserable or accept it’s there and deal with it and learn from it. The more I practice dealing with the struggle it becomes less and less as I have learned to focus on accepting what’s going on and it becomes less burdensome, as Angus, Peer Volunteer says, “it is what it is”, this puts it into perspective for me.