[02] The start of a daily writing practice

Many posts and books talk about the positive impact keeping a daily journal can have. The practice keeps you more mindful, helps you reflect, define clear goals, plan and accomplish them, and de-stress.

I am guilty of impulsive stationary and book shopping. I have a lot of diaries. Most of them completely empty. And whichever ones I did start writing in, I never completely filled.

I seem to be saving them all for some miraculous day when I suddenly have countless beautiful thoughts to fill my diaries with.

And whatever beautiful(?) thoughts I do have are never bestowed the honour to be saved in these diaries. I am always waiting for the individual words to become beautiful sentences, individual sentences to become paragraphs and so on.

I wish I had convinced myself earlier that filling a diary with well-written entries does not happen without a pen and practice.

I would have to “ruin” quite a few diaries with words I will laugh at or feel embarrassed about later. I would have to surround the thoughts I think are worth writing a book on with ridiculous sentences.

Maybe then, when I get old I find myself crying and laughing at a lifetime’s collection of wisdom and folly.

As a part of my decluttering mission this year, I want to take the random thoughts from my anxious mind and save them in these diaries. Or on a file in my computer. Or a note in my phone.

That is also why I have signed up for a 100 days daily writing on 10o Naked Words.

I sleep better after just 10 minutes of pouring random thoughts in a notebook. When I start getting thoughts out of my head and onto a notebook — digital or physical — after a while, the disconnected strands of thoughts weave themselves into something meaningful.

We are creatures of language. Our brains are full of random words, incomplete thoughts and ideas vying for enough neurons to bring them to our attention.

When we focus enough to transfer these onto a notebook, we spare our brains some mercy. They work in overdrive filtering out information that is essential. And in the process, they filter out a lot of things that matter.

If you plan to buy a diary, a word of advice. Buy a good pen. Keep it attached to your diary. AND do not shy away from writing or drawing crap in it.

You will like to laugh at a diary full of crap than wish you had written something.

I hope to be able to keep up the enthusiasm I have now and create a body of work I am proud of(or embarrassed!).