Skip to main content

Haunted by journaling

Journaling is haunting me. In different places, posts, blogs, podcasts, workshops or books, I get brainwashed by the wonders of journaling, what it can do for my morning as part of a morning ritual of meditation.

For many years, I thought if only I would journal, I would have a blog full of life, ideas that never end and a calm relaxed life, with my thoughts off my head every day, not haunting me for fear of being forgotten. I love a good empty page, be it on a book or a screen. To be fair, I even do better on a screen shining back with words filling faster than my hands think they can type and my eyes semi-shut to the wonders that can come by. I don't know what the end game is, I like it to go free. But I don't journal. I can't make up my mind if I want to give it a proper go or not, I don't like the feeling at "failing" some of these initiatives, I don't have much to say every day though I have random thoughts during the day that I which could be recorded somewhere for a later time where there is a screen and a keyboard and access to blogger. In fact, I blame the fact that the blogger smartphone app is not that great (or is actually non-existent) as most times thoughts occur to me on the tube, and I am not a fan of the notes app. I have considered moving blog provider but I am pretty loyal to the place where I started so I am having a hard time doing that, even though it would probably be most effective to actually get more than a blog post a month.

So I don't journal, and more often than not by the time I hit an empty screen I have trouble dealing with the burst of thought I had so strong that I could not stop it from coming to live in a blog. It is not uncommon that by the time I hit the blog most of what I want to say has already formed in my head, in less than 5 minutes and fully baked. My only worry is that I miss the train of thought and that as the words and sentences repeat themselves I am not able to replicate them exactly as my first time. Because there is nothing like the purity of the first time a thought occurs, in its most natural form, linking chains of thought in a unique way that I can't often replicate. In a podcast I heard yesterday, journaling can be used to unleash creative thoughts, put on paper ideas on the business, life, etc. I can see that happening, but I need to find the right means to do it.

Because when I say I don't journal, I am not being quite accurate. I do journal, in fact I #bulletjournal and I am passionately addicted to it. I do it almost on a daily basis and I truly enjoy the month end moment I created as an additional to the common method, of listing what I achieved that month and how I feel about it. The feeling of finishing off tasks and opening new ones, the feeling of knowing that tasks no longer need to fit my head but are somewhere where I know I will get to them. But today is not about bullet journaling, I can do that another day. I just wanted to clarify, that the journaling I refer to is a journaling of free thoughts, creative content, un-attached writing. The exact type of writing my brain would take great satisfaction from, if I only had 115 hours in one day. Which I don't and therefore I don't journal. But I wonder if it can indeed be fitted into a routine and thereby creating a habit of creative creation, same time, same place, every day.

I feel I am being haunted by it, and I feel I may have to try it out. Perhaps September is the right month, alongside all the new things that usually happen in September. I wonder the good things that can happen. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Self

The last classes in Leadership try hard to make you think and figure out what to do about yourself. So we talked about our best self, not just about what it is but more of when it happens. We had to ask a couple of former colleagues, friends and family to give us three examples of when we were at our best. The point is not to skyrocket your ego, don’t worry. It is about understanding what are the environments that make your strengths come out. Because if you know what they are, then you will look to pursue a future that exhibits these characteristics. A “what brings the good in you” kind of thing. It was interesting to get that feedback. More than interesting, it was insightful. It was amazingly consistent throughout and it was curious to see the examples that people remember about you. I do recommend to anyone in need to find a bit more of where they should go. The thing about the examples is that they do have something in common, whether they came from people I worked with recently o...

Flying Sunday

It's been a while, I know. But time is really a precious asset and I have not been leveraging on it well enough... But today I did and I am proud. I threw all the plans out of the window and took the irrefusable offer I was made "Do you want to go flying today?". How does no work as an answer there? Here is one of the c. 30 airplanes you could see there. First reaction from our pilot: "Why are all these planes here, don't people realize it is an amazing day for flying?". Well, I had not untill he told me so! But the best is still to come, as the only girl in the group I got to ride in the front, get first view in take-off, listen to the radio of the air control all the time (we get Boston airport frequency), check the map, speeds, everything... I guess throughout the way we were some quiet passengers, in the wonders of realizing you are on air, the curiosity of identifying different places and the struggle to take the best pictures as we pass the Harvard...

Is this morning on a Saturday?

I have to admit, it has been a long long time since I was awake on a Saturday morning on my own free will (last week, with Patricia waking me up at 8am jet lagged does not really count, it was really not my own free will). And in a way it feels good. I mean, the sun is beautiful. The biggest reason for it to feel good is probably because I have not set my feet out of the door yet: I am claiming that I will study this weekend, and for that I have been out of bed for a couple of hours though it is still barely lunch time here. Well, I am reading about this Mountain Dew drink that is apparently super famous and I never heard about before, I read last night about the Iridium failure by Motorola and some finance case that I will have to negotiate on Monday. Things are fun fun overall but it is not exactly my cup of tea for a Saturday morning. Soon I will start doing my recruiting activities; going through immense websites and try to figure out what is it that will make me get out of be...