Yesterday I did not journal.
After more than four hundred twenty-eight days in a row, I broke my streak of daily journaling: writing three pages every day by hand in a notebook. Every single day in 2021 (other than half a dozen days where I only wrote one page). Every single day so far this year until: YESTERDAY. When … I just didn’t do it.
I didn’t forget, either. I just decided I was ready to break the streak, and it was a good day to do it.
It was a really weird unusual experience to do something — ANYTHING — every single day. For a whole entire year and then some. Not only that, I also meditated every single day in 2021, so there were TWO things I practiced on the daily. VERY weird for me, and great for my self-esteem on top of the habits being super helpful for my well-being.
But what I did every day in 2021 (and WHY and HOW I committed to doing them and the benefits I gained by doing them) is a topic for a different post. THIS post is about … not doing the things. Specifically not journaling, which I know is great for my mental health and happiness, and an opportunity to savor practices I love (taking my fountain pens in hand and letting words stream out of them, getting lighter and clearer and looser with every line unleashed).
Placeholder image & caption to be replaced with something more pleasurable in the near-ish future…
I’ve been marking up notebooks since before I could even read … before I knew the alphabet (I would draw circles and squiggles in a spiral notebook … filling the lines up with little shapes that I *wanted* to have language-meanings at an early age when I didn’t really even talk). And as soon as I learned how to write, I started writing in a diary. These are also stories to log in different posts. Not this one.
Point is, I *like* journaling. It is something I’ve felt compelled to do since ALWAYS. There is no time in my life when I did not want to be putting words and shapes down on paper. And it has always been just as much about the sensory experience of it and the supplies involved in doing it as recording and documenting events, thoughts and feelings. Having a notebook and making personal ink-doodles happen inside it has always been part of my *identity*. So I didn’t NOT journal yesterday because it’s a chore, or something I didn’t want to do. I *love* any and all kinds of writing in notebooks; journaling gives me pleasure (who’d have thought with a domain name like PleasureWriting.com).
I think maybe I decided to break my daily journaling streak yesterday partly because consistently doing something every day does NOT feel like part of my identity. And while it has been great to prove to myself I *can* commit to doing something every single fucking day for more than a whole entire year … I don’t need to KEEP doing it every single day. I *did* it. It is *done*. I am ready to take a break. Reshape the practice and do it a little bit differently. After a day or two or seven off.
I know I want to resume with a daily commitment to some kind of journaling every single day and a certain number of pages (three is actually a great guideline) but for now I am done with the stream-of-consciousness fast “morning pages”/Artist’s Way brain dump method as an EVERY DAY or top priority commitment. I’d like to try some journaling rituals or approaches that are still structured but designed to accomplish something narrower than freeing up my inner artist or whatever, and more focused on specific fantasies and visions to get me fired up for my day in roles that are perhaps more about making money than “art”.
We’ll see what I come up with.
