roughcut #4

journaling to feel nothing and notes app roulette again girls xxxxx

‘you should journal’ a friend kindly offers as I’ve clearly just said something a bit whacky.

Hm, journalinggggg. As a chronic writer (lol) you’d think I’d be on this. I have tried, but performance ego glares back at me from the pages. Writing as if someone is going to read it one day, as if my handwriting needs to be good, as if I need to explain everything, or even blur details, just in case someone finds it and I get found out. For what, who knows. I should journal! Maybe I’ll find out. And then they will. God, the cycle.

Point is, I do journal, but it’s impulsive, messy, short, noncommittal. I write when I’m moved to write, and I think it’s important for me I don’t see this as a duty, but as faithful friend - helping to eject whatever static is rattling around inside. In a way that is quick, raw and most of the time not literal at all. Quickly scribbled ‘poems’ become a neutraliser, especially when I realise they give an actual shape to the anxieties, fixations, and perplexing, jagged, messy thoughts, and in doing so, strips them of their heat and sometimes even exposes the very root.

I always think of this Patti Smith quote, “most often the alchemy that produces a poem or a work of fiction is hidden within the work itself”. So, if you’re like me and the idea of journaling feels overwhelming, like you’re demanding revelation or insight in perfectly formed contemplations, try dealing in colour, imagery, metaphor, spaces, edges, texture, stories. One word at a time. You might just watch your inner psyche revealed before you in all its wild, weird and wonderful glory !!!

So, that said, what brain mulch made its way in to my phone this month? It’s Notes App Roulette time, baby: