That’s what Virginia Woolf called them – the shiny little thoughts that sometimes find their way tucked among the detritus that constitutes most daily diary entries — “diamonds of the dustheap.” I learned this expression this morning when I read a charming Opinion piece in the New York Times (my morning intellectual smorgasbord du jour), “Why I Love Reading Other People’s Diaries” by Lily Koppel (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/opinion/diaries-writing-ai.html ).

The beauty of hand-written diaries, Woolf noted in her diary on April 20, 1919, Koppel says, was that they’re “elastic,” “loose knit,” embracing anything “solemn, slight or beautiful that comes to mind.” Preserving these half-formed thoughts on paper, Woolf felt, was the point: “The advantage of the method,” Woolf wrote, “is that it sweeps up accidentally several stray matters which I should exclude if I hesitated, but which are the diamonds of the dustheap.” 

Beautiful! When I reposted this Opinion piece on Facebook, I commented in solid caps, “I’M WITH HER!”

(Stock photo)

As it happened, I’d just turned, as is my wont, to the NYTimes after spending some time this morning pouring my heart out to my ever-steadfast journal. This, plus my please-and-thank-you prayers to my conception of God, has been part of my morning ritual for as long as I can remember — at least throughout my adult life. I credit these rituals for keeping me afloat through years of stormy seas.

My daily journal entries, handwritten in spiral notebooks, have been like therapy sessions for me. (Think of the many thousands of dollars I’ve saved on therapists’ fees over the years.) I pretend I’m “talking” with a therapist (or friend or lover or family member or roommate) who genuinely cares and studiously listens. This make-believe works best, I guess, for those of us who live alone and don’t have or can’t afford a therapist. 

Most of what I write, to be sure, is total drivel (at least 99% of it), which nobody – and I mean nobody – would care to read.  But every once in a while, after I’ve gone through the what-I-did-yesterday and what-I’m-planning-to-do-today stuff and dig into the what’s-going-on-in-the-world-and-what-I’m-thinking-and-feeling-about-it, I come up with little thoughts worth keeping and insights worth considering more deeply. Forgive the cliché, please, but it’s a lot like peeling back an onion, tearing off the outside layers little by little to get to the core of what matters. 

This morning, for example, I told my journal about my awful day yesterday, how paralyzingly down I felt about the state of the world. I wrote about how upsetting it is for me to see the videos of the people in Gaza living (or trying to live) in rain-whipped tents, sloshing through ankle-deep waters. I wrote I could smell those sewerage-infested waters, feel the cold winter rains and the wet clothing and soaking-wet blankets that fail to keep anyone warm, sense the hunger and thirst and hopelessness of the people so cruelly treated by their oppressors.

But what could or should I do with these emotions, I wrote as I sat up in my warm, clean bed in my sun-filled apartment in the safe and peaceful central mountains of Mexico drinking my freshly made coffee? Which way to turn?

One way to deal with it all, I supposed, is to stop watching the news. This approach is the one many comfortable people, whom I call “The Comfies,” are taking. It’s all getting to be too, too much. Everywhere we look, the earth seems to be crumbling beneath our feet, so maybe we should stop looking and just keep on keeping on as if all is okay?

I’m afraid I can’t do that. Because I know it’s not okay. 

Writing is what I do, so I’m writing now to recommend writing as therapy – especially if you, too, are distraught by today’s news. It likely won’t solve the world’s problems, but it will at least help soothe your own. Write from your heart. In ink. Get your anguish off your chest and onto paper. Save the paper like a cherished friend. Protect it from the tentacles of invading artificial intelligences and rogue online algorithms. Create a physical archive, a treasure chest.

Maybe someday someone – a great (or great-great)-grandchild, perhaps – might be interested in digging into the dustheap of your diaries to discover tiny diamonds in your thoughts about the state of the world during your lifetime. Perhaps if or when that day comes, once-bleeding human hearts will be venerated relics. Maybe that day isn’t so far off after all.

As Koppel wrote in her inspiring Opinion piece, “Diaries are uniquely suited to preserving our individual lives and imaginations. … A diary is the place to express what you think about the world — a safe hold of memory and some of our deepest human feelings. There’s no way this form of thinking could ever truly be replaced by A.I.”

“So,” Koppel says in closing, “raise your pen, and make your mark — even if you are your only reader, or leave your notes for another to find.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

For more on the scientific value of journaling, go to:

https://www.reflection.app/blog/benefits-of-journaling .

And if journaling is new to you, be sure to read Julia Cameron’s classic book, THE ARTIST’S WAY for an excellent how-to.