into the journal: kiley mann

06

and

Jun 04, 2025

This feature series examines how and why people journal, because no two practices are identical. Appreciating the journal as a sacred inner world for uninhibited wandering and wondering.

If you have a journaling practice that you’d like to share about here, email me at evapberezovsky(at)gmail(dot)com.

kiley mann

My name is Kiley. I am a writer, artist, and digital creator. I explore connection, spirituality and magic, consciousness, truth and purpose, and the healing powers of authentic self-expression within my work. I enjoy transmuting my lived experience into writing, poems, other mixed media arts, and memes.

I post my journal entries via a newsletter on Substack (Five Hundred and Twenty-Five). You can also find me on Instagram, or on TikTok.

origins

I have been journaling in some way or form ever since I could write, just because I loved it so much. It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment, but I remember becoming conscious of the process in second grade, and then I definitely became more dedicated to it in a documentary way in middle school. I feel like there is such an allure to keeping a sort of personal record or diary around that age.

language

I use “journal,” “notebook,” and “diary” all interchangeably depending on the mood and the subject. But honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of any of them. I often use “diary” in a past-tense way because it feels more whimsical, more childlike — almost has a secret connotation to it. “Notebook” is very studious and scientific to me, and “journal” tends to have a certain buzzword property attached to it that attracts more attention when mentioned.

I haven’t found a word that really settles with me the way I would like it to. Maybe it exists somewhere out there in a different language, but I haven’t found my preference in the English vocabulary yet. I’ll say that I “journal" when I talk about it online, but I usually say “I’m writing” when speaking out loud.

routine

My ability to write completely hinges on allowing myself to be spontaneous and flexible. It becomes incredibly difficult when it feels like I’m under a deadline or answering to what somebody else tells me to write. I try to make peace with this and walk a fine line between dedicating time every day to write and letting myself do whatever I please. If I don’t write every day, I go stir crazy with my own thoughts, but if I place any more specific demands on myself, I risk not writing at all due to aversion.

Sometimes I will write all day and I can’t rip myself away from my pen and paper or keyboard, and sometimes I will struggle to write a paragraph. Sometimes I encounter periods where I end up not writing for long stretches of time. It has been such a long time since this happened, but those absences are usually followed by periods of obsessive documentation to catch up.

Regardless, I try to show up for myself somehow each and every day, and this is very important to me because I love seeing my own work pile up on itself. I try to embrace whatever natural inclination I have at any given time and allow myself to write when I feel pulled to do so. The different times of day have their different benefits. Morning writing feels very grounding, restorative, and insightful, while nighttime writing feels a bit more intense and melodramatic.

a.m.

I like to sit down in the morning and write by hand, usually during breakfast, or sometimes while I stretch and or do yoga. I eat the same breakfast every day, so having a daily journaling practice can allow these routines to perfectly align, though, this is flexible and never really occurs in the same way for too many days in a row.

I prefer to sit down for this handwritten practice sometime in the early day, before things get busy and mobile. Sometimes I get sucked into the day and this gets pushed out, but I really have found a benefit to writing in the morning and getting all the thoughts that have shown up overnight out onto a piece of paper so I no longer have to carry them through the next day. It allows for a blank-slate start.

p.m.

If I have neglected to write during the day for whatever reason, I am almost always pulled back into it before I go to bed. Not out of guilt, but because this is how I best show appreciation to myself — by showing up for these habitual things. Sometimes I do like to let the anticipation build up throughout the day and tease myself a bit, just because my inner artist occasionally likes to be flirted with and I have to fulfill that duty. It's nice to have the events and happenings and drama from the day to report on if I felt a shortage of material in the morning.

Nighttime writing is also where I have found myself to be the most dedicated to my creative projects. I tend to be more moody and sad in the evening, so I try to give myself this time to write creatively and less factually. I prefer to write with a pen in the morning and write with a computer in the evening. My thoughts are more methodical and rhythmic early in the day, and therefore easier to capture. But I simply can't write fast enough for my own thoughts in the evening if I try to handwrite them all. I am incredibly thankful for the invention of the computer keyboard whose speed and rhythm catches the rapidity of what I'm thinking when my pen just can't keep up.

preferred place

I will write anywhere and anytime I can find a bit of privacy, but I prefer to write on my bedroom floor.

purpose

Journaling touches every area of my existence — my deeply personal emotions, my art, my work, my everyday maintenance type of things. I journal because it has been the tool that has kept my life afloat. It has always been somehow part of me, major or minor, and so I can't ever imagine abandoning it.

It's very integral and structural to how I live and go about my life and process my thoughts and feelings. It keeps me sane in a very regulatory way and also allows me to process the happenings of my life in a manner that is more layered and intricate. Often, journaling provides a secret perspective that isn't available otherwise.

Like how sweeping your floor is maintenance for your house, writing every day is maintenance for my brain. If I don't make time for it, things can quickly get dusty and dirty and there becomes too much to clear out at once. Things get lost and mixed up and my whole world begins to crumble down. I have too many thoughts going through my head every day to not write them down. I would forget everything if I didn't have it on a notepad or in a journal somewhere.

My journaling practice ranges from casual to formal, chronicled to more freeform and poem-like. My personal daily journal entries where I sit down and write free-flowing thoughts are usually just for me only. They are a very necessary part of processing life. I know that something has gone seriously wrong with me if I ever stop journaling.

evolution

Journaling has gained significant importance over time for me. It has snowballed completely. Journaling used to be more of an indulgence — something I did in my free time, for fun, or because I had some extra creative oil to burn. Now, it’s the vital structure of my creative practice entirely. I used to struggle with my art and my writing in a very unique way because I didn't consider journaling to be part of it, but my journaling is my art and my writing. That seems obvious in retrospect, but it wasn't back then.

I think there is an often trivial attitude towards journaling, that it is just an embellishment floating on top of these deeper, more “meaningful” forms of art, or just an extension of something to do if you have the time on the daily. But to me, journaling is its very own specific art form. In every way, just as incredibly complex and meaningful. It’s not given full credit where it's due by the formal art world yet — not that it matters — but its time will come.

For me, though, it is one of the rawest forms of creative expression I can get out of myself, and that is what I am consistently chasing after as an artist. For this reason, journaling has stuck out and gained more significance for me.

medium & material

I keep many different types of journals, both digital and physical. I think digital journaling and physical journaling work very well as a pair if you are deeply engaged with both. They both have their pros and cons, and attributes they provide that the other can’t fulfill.

physical

Physical journaling is somewhat unreliable to me. I have notoriously lost so many important notebooks over the years, which drives me crazy any time I think about it. Of course, I still have a deep love for physical journaling, and nothing can top the flow state that can be achieved via handwriting.

My current daily journal is a 400-page black soft cover Moleskine. I also have plenty of other physical notebooks I use throughout the day to aid me in my work, creative thinking, brainstorming, or whatever else I might need. There is a journal for everything: a dream journal, commonplace journal, to-do list journal, poem journal, etc. — but I won't get too far into detailing them all out. It would take a lot of time.

I go through them very quickly, so they change shape and form very often. I try different types and brands just because I'm curious. I even learned how to make my own leather-bound journals, also just because I'm curious.

digital

I do an equal amount of digital journaling. Sometimes physical journaling falls more into the background of my life or takes on more of a singular role as a documentation or creativity tool, but digital journaling has been a consistent daily practice for many years.

I use the Notes app on my computer the most, and recently had to buy extra storage in my iCloud because it got too clogged up and nothing was saving or syncing. I never thought I would have to do this, but it just accumulates more than anything physical.

The Notes app has always been there for me. I’ve kept quick thoughts and journal entries and whatnot in there ever since I was 14. The school I went to gave us our own computers, and I had a free period where I was taking online Latin, but I’d spend most of the period journaling in the Notes app and it formed a habit that I have relied on ever since.

I had never experienced the freedom or mobility of my own laptop like that before, in combination with the discovery of the notes app, my computer quickly became my infinite portable digital diary. I don't like to feel restricted in any way, or by any medium, or type of journal, and this fixed all of that. It has been my favorite system ever since

The Notes app serves me so well. I love how digital journaling allows me to reference thoughts from years ago in an instant, or delete and duplicate thoughts in an instant. Anything I ever put out publicly or draft or want to make official goes through my Notes app. Everything more mundane does, too: grocery lists, therapy notes, single sentences of poetic thoughts. The Notes app sees all. Lol.

utensil of choice

I love a classic MacBook laptop keyboard. For physical journaling, I use Zebra’s G-402 0.5mm ballpoint pen. It’s stainless steel and retractable. It has a nice flow of ink and allows me to write very fast. The metal pen is the perfect weight for me, and I somehow haven't lost it yet. I've really been enjoying it, but I'm sure my pen choice will shift and change in the future.

Sometimes I like to switch up my pen if I'm in a different location. I think it’s nice to have a different flow and color of ink mark a setting change.

rereading

If I feel I wrote something worth sharing, I will revisit the specific journal entry on a later day and type it out so it’s more mobile, easier to read, and easier to engage with. Transferring entries to the digital realm is a way of bringing them to life for me. This only happens on special occasions, but mostly they are left completely alone and never reread.

Handwritten journaling is all very private and hush hush. I say this because it’s even kept a bit of a secret from myself — my handwriting is hard for even me to read, so typing it allows me to reference my own writing back. Some things are not meant to be reread, though, and so those stay tucked away in my physical journal. Handwriting is very therapeutic and cathartic for a reason. I believe that revisiting old journals is one of the most direct forms of access to the past self we have, so it requires a very delicate and gentle treatment when rereading anything.

a recent entry

This is a morning entry I typed into my Notes app after I cleaned up a bunch of dead ants in my living room. Short but sweet:

I have been trying to figure out where these ants have been coming from for days. This morning I realized they are coming to and from my mom’s jasmine tree: a slow stream of them coming in from the crack in the back screen door trailing up the side of the big blue pot in the living room and swarming themselves all the way up the branches. The jasmine tree seems to be secreting a sort of sweet substance that the ants are both attracted to and getting stuck in. Inside the jasmine sap excretions, there are thousands of ant eggs next to thousands of ant carcasses. I had to move this thing outside.