I haven’t journalled in a while, and I find myself thinking, if I’m talking so much all the time about how good, important and valuable journalling is, then why haven’t I done it lately? And I think about it a little bit more and I realize it’s because I feel like I have “journalled enough”. More thinking reveals that this isn’t exactly true, that’s a summary that’s so low-res that it’s smudged out. Next I get to “I have a big backlog of past journal entries that I haven’t revisited, and so writing new ones feels like it’s ‘just adding to the pile'”. And here I find myself thinking, ah. There’s an immediate therapeutic value to journalling for its own sake, and there’s a second value to revisiting it, but there’s (for me) some psychic cost in building up lots of unread journals. So here some clarity presents itself. I could journal and then just straight up delete what I just wrote. That’s an option. But really what I think needs to happen is I need to “unclench” my thinking around the new journals… and, of course, address the fact that I haven’t revisited the old entries.
Even here I realize the summary is low-res and smudged. Because I HAVE revisited my old journal entries before, but in ways that felt incomplete and unproductive. There’s something about me that makes me hesitate to… pick up that project again. Why? I guess it’s because I feel like I have “other more important things to do”, like… all of the writing I’m “supposed” to do. Which, having thought out loud, I pretty quickly realize is kinda silly, because it’s not like I’m going to do very good writing from a sense of obligation and fear. My best writing happens when I’m in a state of play, and it’s hard to be playful when I feel like I have unmet, unaddressed obligations looming over me. And I don’t even necessarily need to finish all of those tasks and projects, I really just need to face them, discuss them, renegotiate them, to decide what I’m going to do with them. It’s the indecision that really weighs on me. So now it becomes clear to me that, even making some sketchy plans for “read X book on monday, update Y on tuesday, watch Z movie on wednesday, read W old journals on thursday” (in a little more detail than this, that’s what a calendar is for) will free up the psychic energy I need to write more spiritedly.
I do fantasize about having this really neat stack of journals that are voluminous and well-considered and full of meaning and insight and personal growth, and I can point at this or that and tell you what was wrong, what I learned from it, and so on. And as I say that out loud, I have to laugh because even if that were somehow achievable as an end-goal (which it prooobably isn’t), the process is going to look janky. I’m just… kinda tired of being so janky, I guess. I want to preach the gospel of jankiness and yet I am currently somewhat tired of jank… the most important thing is that I be honest with myself always.
I have so much stuff (notes, journals). I’m tired of having so much stuff. But I don’t feel like I can just throw out all the stuff. Because I tried that before and I regretted it. And I don’t think putting it out of sight would help all that much, either. Although saying that out loud makes me think… well, it could, a little, in the short run. A refresh can be useful as a temporary change of scenery. I do know that I chronically underestimate the value of a change of scenery. I don’t want to be too quick to over-impose a solution to my problems, in case I’m not quite defining the problem correctly.
(I just glanced at the previous wordvomit and I see that the next steps I had defined for myself were, “write out the fragments of your essays and talk to people about them + ask for feedback”. Which I have done to some degree, which I am proud of myself for – good job Visa! – though I think I can afford to do it even more and get even more benefit from it.)
I wonder what else in my mind is “smudged” right now? Or tangled, knotted? It feels like there are several other things for sure. I did some sprints yesterday which felt great physically. I’ve been neglecting my body for quite a while now and it’s definitely time I gave it some love. I had to hesitate writing that sentence, because my default instinct is to talk about exercise in a casually punitive way – “time to get in shape”. I know that’s not the right frame, and it’s never worked well for me. I tend to push myself too hard, get burned out in some way, and stop doing it. What I’d like is to do short sprints just to get my heart rate up, enjoy the soreness, enjoy the speed, enjoy feeling alive, and then slowly expand from there. I’ve done that somewhat with my stretching and I’m proud of it.
Back to the journalling? What can I tell myself about getting more clarity here? I feel like I’ve been in this loop where I keep telling myself to do things, there’s the tyranny of shoulds again, “I should read my old journals” – and it feels like homework. I don’t need to do homework! I hereby release myself of the obligation to do homework. All homework is cancelled. Alright, great. Now we can do whatever we want. So what do I want to do, about my journals? Well… it might be helpful to have some guiding questions? What do I want to know about myself? What emotional state do I want to experience? What do I want to discover? I would like to have had read everything, but idk if I actually want to read everything. I’ll think about this more.