What is a journal's purpose?

I'm writing an article on journal writing at the moment, and it's making me think about what journal writing really means to me. My journal is a place to be so many things - but always just for me (well - until I started blogging and the whole audience thing starts to influence you a little). It is both about the process of writing and how that process helps me digest my day or my feelings or life as it is happening around me AND about the product of the journal and having it to read back later (if I keep it).

"I find that my journal is a place for me. A physical space to be."

Though of course it occupies only a little corner of a bedside table or section of my handbag. I think the importance of my journal as a 'place' became more clear to me on the weekend when I bought myself a new bag. Not happy with how it looked I bought some cool daisies to stick on to it. And to make the bag ready for use in my lifestyle as a full time writer (It houses my Notebook Computer for when I want to be mobile) ... I added a paper based notebook. It was in the act of adding the notebook that I realised that by having a journal with or new me, I have something of comfort.

My journal provides me comfort more than anything else. And it represents an opportunity for good mental health.