{"id":11204,"date":"2019-09-18T11:14:03","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T11:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/?p=11204"},"modified":"2019-09-25T19:28:06","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T19:28:06","slug":"0777-journaling-for-myself-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0777-journaling-for-myself-again\/","title":{"rendered":"0777 \u2013 journaling for myself again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I started writing in a paper journal again. It’s been a while. I’m not sure exactly how long, though I could probably piece it together by taking out all my paper journals and laying them out. That’s something I’ll probably do sometime. But in the meantime I want to just think about the journaling I *have* been doing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started doing it again while I was on military reservist back in August \u2013 I brought a fresh notebook with me to write in. And then \u2013 this bit is kinda funny \u2013 there was an evening where I was feeling a lot of soreness in my hips from stretching and working out, to the point where the pain was actually difficult to put out of mind \u2013 and so I asked my wife to bring me a bedside table and my iPad, so I could distract myself. And… since I now had a bedside table, I brought my journal too, and started writing in it. And when I woke up the next morning and saw my journal lying open with my handwriting in it<\/a>, I felt something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What was the feeling? I felt a sense of… communion. I felt loved, by my past self from the day before. And I felt compelled to keep the game going. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some level, this is true for everything I do. As I type this out in my wordpress text editor, I can see that the title says “0777” \u2013 which means that there were 776 posts like this before it. And that gives me a sense of continuity. A sense of being a part of something greater than myself, a sense of having “built” the “environment” that I “inhabit”. Here’s an older picture of when I was going through my writing<\/a> \u2013 I described it as comforting, like your past self giving you a hug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But I think what really struck me, while I was journaling… was realizing, while I was doing it, that it was a somewhat rare moment for me \u2013 to be writing for myself with absolutely no intended audience other than myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started writing these word vomits partially because I had gotten sick of writing for some particular audience or another. I had gotten sick of always thinking about other people when I was writing, always trying to frame things for other people. I was spending so much time and energy thinking about how other people would respond to my writing, what other people wanted to hear, that I had lost track of what I<\/em> wanted to hear. What I wanted to read. What I thought, independent of everything else, everybody else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I abandoned my main blog (where I had been writing about local news and local politics) and came here, to ramble about whatever I felt like rambling about. And the early vomits were particularly incoherent and rambly, with no particular direction in mind, no goal. I just wanted to get as many words out of my system as I could, and make sense of it later. Well… some time has passed. I started in 2012, it’s been 7 years now. I’m a different person \u2013 I’ve been several different people since. And along the way, I’ve developed a bit of a Twitter following \u2013 there are 400+ people who follow the @1000wordvomits<\/a> account. Which is pretty cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had always meant \/1000\/ to be a project to be completed in public. After all, if I wanted to do it totally privately, I could’ve done it totally privately \u2013 either anonymously with no link to my identity, or offline. But I wanted to do it publicly and online. Why? Because… I don’t think anything like this has been done? Not quite like this, anyway. And it’s something that I wish I had seen someone else do, in this particular way. I don’t expect most people to be interested. Even I’m not entirely sure if I’m interested any more, the way I was when I was starting out. I’ve kind of done what I set out to do, as a writer. I know that I’m a writer now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But so… somewhere along the way, because I had all these goals about being a prolific writer, being public facing, developing a voice, building an audience \u2013 somewhere along the line, I started to undervalue Truly Private writing. Because… why write anything that nobody’s ever going to see?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I ask that question, I can laugh, because it’s obvious now. You can think thoughts in private that are harder to think publicly \u2013 and once you have those thoughts, if you subsequently want to share them with others, you can. It can be a simple matter of copy + paste if it’s something you’re writing in your private notes or emails to yourself \u2013 and if it’s on pen and paper, well you can rewrite it. I type very fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this whole word vomit is really just a reminder to myself of the value of writing privately, for myself, even as I’m “racing” to be a prolific writer in public. I am my most important reader. I am my most precious audience. And while it’s great to have lots of people to talk to, and learn from, and riff and play with \u2013 I’ve said recently that the #1 thing I wish I had done differently <\/a>was be more intentional about spending time with great people \u2013 spending time with myself is a critical part of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, it’s all connected, isn’t it? I am one of the people I know. And when people say things like “you are the most important person in your life” \u2013 I don’t actually believe in taking that at face value. I don’t know if it was always necessarily true for me. I mean… there are ways in which it’s “foundationally” true, but there are also ways in which… OK, this is a Gordian knot in the making. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think what I really want to say here is that… I have been experimenting with calibrating my sense of self-worth all my life. I don’t like calling it a “struggle”, because that de-emphasizes the playful curiosity with which I do it. I have experimented with being a megalomaniac (and truly believing it) and I have experimented with being worthless (and truly believing it). “Love tells me I am everything, wisdom tells me I am nothing, and between the two banks flows the river of my life.” Then what? I think after it all, or maybe in between it all, there’s a sort of quiet assessment. I’ve noticed that I think more highly of myself now, but not in the brash, needy way that I did as a teenager \u2013 and I believe you can actually see the difference in my face<\/a>. I’d like to see how far I can take this, and I think journaling is an important part of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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