I have semi-regular journal notes going back over a decade, and my experience was opposite to GP - instead of discovering how many things happened in that time, I discovered my mind has been spinning in circles, trying to find solutions to the same problems, and despite feeling otherwise day-to-day, no actual progress has been made. It was an important discovery for me, though not much came of it anyway.

Ugh. I hadn't considered that. I had kids, a biz and a disabled wife. I had to achieve. Even then, some days I wasn't much capable. Other days I forced out results but at a high cost.

Sorry to hear that; I hope you're all doing well now!

I suppose I had too much time to dwell, not enough external pressure to keep my shit together. I have kids now too, but the end result is that I rarely journal anymore - there's always something else I need or want to do, and then suddenly I'm dead tired; rinse, repeat.

Adderall reshuffled the deck for me and I started being dealt better hands. Most importantly, I could finally turn realizations into persistent changes.

The changes still took years but having effort pay off was a new thing.

Great to see it helped. I'm having mixed success with Ritalin - it initially fixed some major problems arguably permanently, and restored some of my lacking self-confidence, but now it's a mixed blessing - it feeds bad habits just as well as it feeds good ones. An indiscriminate booster, that is.