On Writing #3

I've been writing a lot more the past few days, as evinced by the previous posts on this blag¹, than I have in a while, and it feels good. Of course, what I am writing at the moment is relatively low effort on the "writing mechanics" side of things and much more on the creative side, where things are fun and don't quite have to flow smoothly or make sense. I'm not writing essays, after all.

Only, this post is a bit of a deviation from that, and a bit more of an essay. Over the past few months I've gotten into a habit of carrying a small Field Notes notebook in my back pocket along with a ballpoint pen, next to my wallet. I have used these little Field Notes as my journals and for the first time in my life managed to fill up 2(!) entire journals in a row! I wrote in them nearly every day, and spent at least 15 or 20 minutes quietly processing my thoughts, scratching out my nearly unreadable cursive and giving shape and honesty to the emotions I formerly wouldn't even acknowledge existed. This has been an extremely cathartic exercise for me, to say the least; I have created a daily writing habit, and it feels so good to do. I never walk away from my little writing sessions wishing I hadn't done so, and whenever I miss a day I notice immediately and make a point of fixing it the next day.

All that being said, I am noticing something interesting as I focus my writing more on a "creative output" again: I am not writing in my journals. The joy of writing is still here, I still feel good (very good, actually) whenever I sit down and write. And even today, when my toddler absolutely lost his shit for pretty much the entire day and I am still recovering from yesterday's ickiness, I feel good writing, and I am looking forward to my writing time. But I'm not taking time to write for me these last few days, and my journal (still a totem of my writing habit, sitting in my back pocket) goes unused.

I suspect that whenever I start directing my creative energies away from the simple joy of creating and into creating for a particular purpose, the simplicity of the act is lost. It's no longer a catch basin for the thoughts that leak out when my heart is too full, it's a stream I am trying to direct. And that direction causes a specific loss of fidelity: the loss of my emotional processing capability in exchange for creative energy. I thought this compromise had been worth it as I've gotten this project off the ground, but there are some problems creeping in. Losing my creative-emotional outlet has put me in a bit of a tailspin emotionally, and I'm noticing myself struggle with emotional processing more than usual. It starts to affect other parts of my life almost immediately: for the first time I can remember, I screamed at my kid on Friday. I was overwhelmed with him crying and saying no about...I don't even remember what, and after the fiftieth time that day of him going from 0 to 100 in an instant, I went 0 to 1000. I left him trembling and quietly crying, more scared than I've ever seen him in his life. He looked at me with eyes that seemed to lose their absolute trust in me, and that look has burned itself into my mind.

Maybe the thesis here, then, is that while I am enjoying the creative process immensely, and it feels goddamn good to write a story again, I need to keep taking care of myself and giving myself the little bits of writing-based therapy that I had before on a daily basis. To give myself some credit, I haven't gone back to work yet after the new year, and that has totally thrown my normal scheduled reflection time, so there is at least some explanation for having gone away from this practice, but clearly there is work to do.

No picture today, I am still feeling sick and had no opportunity to go out and shoot. But I'll be in the city tomorrow, and my fancy new pancake lens for street photography comes on Tuesday (hopefully) so I should start getting some really good shit soon.