I read this article in NPR, “The transformative power of keeping a daily journal”, and found myself nodding in agreement.
It’s a brief interview with Suleika Jaouad about her new book, The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life. Her book Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted has been on my reading list.
I’ve been a practitioner of Julia Cameron’s “Morning Pages” journaling method for more than a decade. Three hand-written pages, no more no less, every day. I started small, with a pocket-sized notebook, unsure I’d ever be able to fill 3 pages with words. In hindsight, that seems ridiculous for a writer to say, and I wonder if I didn’t think I could fill 3 pages with words about me. Now I have boxes of notebooks of Morning Pages.
When Ry came along, my journaling routine moved to Instagram where I’ve chronicled our adventures, challenges, and changes in my dog, and changes in me, too. Jaouad mentions how journaling is a way to “write your way back to yourself, you take the grist of everyday life and transform it,” which resonates.
Grist, and “grist for the mill” are two things my brain associates with Shawn Achor and his book The Happiness Advantage. Until I read that quote from Jaouad, I had forgotten about that book, about Achor, and that phrase, “grist for the mill.” My brain tripped down memory lane for a moment, recalling long walks in Vancouver, listening to Achor during a difficult time, and reminding myself about Monet distance. Even today, I still remind myself of Monet distance, do a kind of self check, and make adjustments accordingly.
Lately, I’ve found myself returning to Morning Pages, and sometimes finding 3 pages too constricting. The realizations sometimes coming in the last 2 lines of the last page instead of somewhere in the middle of the second page. I’ve found, however, that those last 2 lines may stay with me for awhile. I’ll sit with those 2 lines, let them marinate. Sometimes the 2 lines vanish, as if they’ve been reviewed and merged and I can move on. Sometimes the 2 lines continue to tickle my brain, and end up further fleshed out in later entries. My brain still needs to process something before it can be merged and I can move on.
One thing I hadn’t considered is using prompts for journaling. I use prompts for creative writing, and I’ve taken a number of creative writing classes that employ prompts, but it didn’t occur to me to use prompts for journaling. Jaouad lists some of her favorite prompts, and this one from “A Day in the Life of My Dreams” from Hollye Jacobs caught my attention:
“Write a day, from the momen you wake up until you go to sleep, in the life of your dreams a couple of years out. But do sin present tense.”
She explains that she likes this prompt because it forces her to do two things:
- Imagine herself in the future
- Articulate what she wants for herself in the future
I find myself curious about using this prompt myself. I have struggled with the word “want” when applied to myself. There are layers of conflict associated with that word that are embedded in my brain.
“Want” is one of 5 words in the English language that give me the most trouble when applied to myself. Now I’m curious if employing the prompt will help crack the barrier in my brain to the word “Want.”