Sometimes, I find the act of writing helps me understand myself better. They also say that the greatest way to know that you fully understand it is to explain it to someone who knows nothing about it. Writing is rather equivalent to that, or can be used for that. I keep two personal journals. One is my research journals which, sadly, don't get many entries these days. The other is a personal journal and I've kept it since I was an early teen. I've got hundreds of composition notebooks, all filled with gibberish.