How Journaling Helped Me Find My Husband (the honest version)

It's 2008. I'm in college, a little lonely, and The Secret is sitting on every nightstand in America.

So one night I do the thing the book says to do. I open my journal, and I write down — in detail — exactly what I want in a partner.

Not just "funny and kind." Specific. How he'd treat people when no one was watching. How I'd want to feel standing next to him in a room. What I'd want us to build together.

A few weeks later, I met Seth.

Now — I'm not going to sell you a spell. I don't think the page reached into the universe and ordered me a husband. Here's what I think actually happened: writing it down helped me recognize him. I'd gotten so clear about what I was looking for that when it walked up, I didn't talk myself out of it.

The list didn't conjure a person.
It tuned my eyes.

And Reader, it was not a fairy tale at first. Our first date was a fifty-cent movie night at the run-down theater in town. Ten minutes in, the film reel literally exploded out of the projector. And nobody said a word. The whole theater just sat there in the dark like that was normal.

Seth was the one who got up, walked to the projection booth, and informed the college kids working there that the movie had, you know, stopped existing.

That was the moment.
The guy who stands up.

Almost two decades later: three sons and two dogs.

This is the part of journaling people get shy about, so let me just say it. It is okay to be a little delusional on the page. A dream is only delusional until it happens. Then we call it a plan, or fate, or the best decision we ever made. The page is the one place you're allowed to want the thing out loud before you've earned the right to want it.

Nobody's grading you.
Nobody's there to tell you to be realistic.

Here's the grounded version, no vision board required. Open to a clean page and write one thing you want. But write it in present tense, like it's already yours.

Not: I hope I'll feel less behind at work someday.

Instead: I do work I'm proud of, and I leave most days with something left in the tank.

Be specific enough that you'd recognize it walking down the street. That's the whole trick. Specificity is what tunes your eyes.

Your one small thing this week: write a single sentence about something you want as if it's already true. One. You don't have to believe it yet. You just have to put it somewhere you can see it.

Then hit reply and tell me: what's the one thing you'd write down if you let yourself be a little delusional about it? I will not tell you it's crazy. I'll just be over here, quietly rooting for it.

Deep breaths. Just write.

Krystal

P.S. Joan Didion said she wrote to find out what she was thinking. I wrote to find out who I was waiting for. (If you want a runway for this kind of writing, Days 16–20 of The First 30 Pages are built entirely on it — but the reply's the thing I actually want today.)