Your journal knows you better than your feed does, because you never write in it for likes.

Words written with an audience in mind get shaped by that audience, usually without you noticing the edits happening. Private writing has nothing to perform for, so the ugly and the uncertain survive onto the page. That is why it ends up a more accurate record of a year than everything you posted during it.

Keep something nobody will read, even a few lines at the end of a day. Write the version you would never publish. Read it back a month later and you will see patterns that were invisible while you were inside them.