Journaling as therapy?

While I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to a weight-loss podcast that suggested everyone attempting to lose weight should keep a daily journal. In the journal, write about your day, what you ate, and why you ate it. This allows you to reflect on your food choices, see where you went wrong and what you did right, so you can do better tomorrow.
I found this to be an interesting thought. Does a journal help you? Do you write on paper, or use a blog? What are your goals for your journal? Are you simply enjoying writing? Or are you using it to preserve your thoughts? Or perhaps just using a journal as a daily log for reference?
It occurred to me that a journal can be much more than what I originally thought of one: a basic record of the day's events. It could be a tool for so many other goals: helping you focus on career advancement; as a school aide; as a weight loss aide, and so on.
The podcast also stated that it is extremely difficult to lie on paper. With all the junk I read in the papers, I wonder if this is true. For a personal journal, it might be. But this certainly is not true for our media today. Perhaps the media should keep a journal, with the goal of honest reporting?

Dear Computer Thief

You broke into my home in the wee hours of the morning, Wednesday June 6th. You stole my computer. You also stole my husband's cell phone, but obviously you figured out we were asking the police to trace the cell phone using the GPS locator in all newer cell phones these days, so you threw the phone back into our backyard Thursday afternoon.
I do not have anything interesting on my computer: I do not have bank account numbers, credit card information, not even my social security number. The morning of the theft, I used my work computer to change all my passwords to my email, webpages, everything, so you can't even read my emails, with the exception of those I kept on my computer.
I hope you enjoy the pictures of my family. The births of both of my children, their first cries, my son's first crawl, first steps, pictures of my parents, baby showers, birthdays. None of this is important to you, but it's extremely important to me.
I hope you enjoy reading my papers I've written for my various college classes. I hope you like my music, although I seriously doubt you'll be listening to classical music. Can you even pronounce Stravinsky?
I hope you like my recipe database, which I seemed to have missed in my backups. When you look at my checking account register, you'll be doubly frustrated to realize that I don't have any money in my checking account, so even if the account numbers were on the computer, you couldn't get any money out of them. You can't re-sell the computer to any reputable store, as the computer's serial number is flagged as stolen.
I suspect that my cat startled you and you left with such a small bounty. Rest assured, if you come back, I will kill you. I have a newborn and a toddler in my home, and you were armed with a knife to break into my home. I will defend my children with deadly force without hesitation. I replaced my laptop, and I purchased Lo-Jack in this laptop. Yes, they have Lo-Jack for laptop computers. Thanks to the financial burden of replacing my computer, my children will not be able to play in a fenced-in backyard. The two thousand dollars required to replace this machine would have purchased a fence for my backyard. Thank you so much for making my life significantly more difficult, not just financially, but now I must walk around my house, continually angry, thinking like I'm going to be robbed again tonight. I now sleep incredibly lightly. I now have motion detector floodlights outside my home. I've changed all the locks on the doors, and added second locks to the windows. This is a wonderfully peaceful, sleepy bedroom community in a quiet suburb. But to me, it is now a vulnerable area in a war zone, requiring immediate and continual fortification.
I hope you rot in hell.

The Terrible Twos

The terrible twos should be renamed. It's not terrible. It's frustrating. My son is now 30 months - 2 1/2. He's so incredibly frustrated. And that frustration is well earned, too. Certainly in my case, the "terrible twos" can be summed up in two T words: "terrible talking". The poor child is trying so hard to communicate orally, but just doesn't have the enunciation to be able to communicate effectively. He's trying so hard, my heart aches for him.
Attempt this: Novacaine your tongue and lips, and then attempt to read the Gettysburg address out loud. That's what a child at the age of two is attempting to overcome. His speech therapy is coming along, but simply not fast enough for my clever little boy. He knows exactly what he wants from the refrigerator. But he is completely unable to say "strawberry". Heck, he can't say the R's yet, so us trying to get him to say "berry" is just "Bah". That's fine, except he also loves Bananas and Bagels. So he says "Bah" when he wants a banana, or a bagel, or a strawberry, or blueberries, or bread. By the time I get to the third food on that list, he's begun to melt down in frustration that he can't tell me what he wants.
Thus begins the "nicknaming" of things. Thomas and Friends is simple: "Choo choo". He's got that down pat. He's begun to show awareness of his bowel movements, and when it hurts, he wants A&D Lotion. "Lotion" is unbelievably difficult for a toddler to say - in fact, anything multisyllabic or with adjoining consonants you can pretty much rule out, with the exception of "choo choo". So we 'renamed' the A&D lotion. It's now "goo". This was REALLY easy to teach him, since I make a silly voice and say "gooey gooey gooey gooey" and he starts cracking up. I was hoping it would help him with his g's, because they sound dangerously close to the 'ch' sound. Of course, he'll say "choooo" and then start laughing, so I know he's trying to say "goo" because he wants A&D on his little butt. So I guess it worked, to a degree. But it's difficult to find words that can easily be said by a 2-year old, are somewhat close to the real word, and of course, make some kind of sense. That's a tough bill to fill.
So I've been dealing with a very frustrated toddler, and playing 20 questions with him. "Want this?" "no". "how about this?" "no"... and on and on. What a life.