Hear the music of your planets

This pic is from my 1978 school diary. Five years old and bargaining for a typewriter.

I’ve got diaries going back almost 50 years. It’s a bloody treasure trove. I’m not a daily diary-keeper. I just go there when I want to save something special, need to vent (because there’s stuff you just can’t load onto others), and when I have a feeling that I need to work stuff out. That I’m not seeing everything. And let’s be honest, when are we ever seeing “everything”?

If you see that this sort of process might have some value, but then hear yourself counter, “Oh my god, I never want to read back what I write,” I’ll challenge you: that is absolutely not the point. And I’ll throw in some wonder at what’s behind your resistance (or rather, I will encourage you to wonder).

The point of writing down your feelings and thoughts is to let yourself be heard in that moment. Because we humans are constantly editing, filtering, shutting ourselves up, and telling ourselves that this or that emotion or thought is just not acceptable. But ‘as any fule kno’, that’s called repression and can be very bad for your mental health.

If it makes you feel better, you can tell yourself you’re going to burn it in the sink as soon as it’s done.

But I keep doing this diary thing because I always learn something by letting my feelings come out through my nervous system, and onto a piece of paper — through handwriting, btw, not typing. Handwriting activates different parts of your brain from typing. It slows you down. It lets your hand know something your head hasn’t caught up with yet. It’s better for processing, understanding, memory and connection-building (and that means insight). Two links for you:

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-architecture-of-identity/202603/why-handwriting-is-better-for-your-brain-than-typing
• https://writingcooperative.com/writing-by-hand-boosts-creativity-and-emotions-in-texts-8c086338ac77

If you feel weird about ‘journalling’ as we know it now, here’s a gentle way in:

1. With your pen or pencil, write a question to yourself: anything you like. Just write any question. Here are some free starters – you can always do another later (believe me, you’ll come up with way better ones of your own almost immediately).

• Why do I like that person so much in the way I do?
• Why am I in a bad mood?
• What do I really enjoy but have forgotten I love?
• Why was I snappy when it didn’t make sense?
• Who am I envious of and what can I do about it to feel proud of myself instead?
• What’s that sad / angry / dark feeling that won’t go away and where did it come from?
• Who are my biggest fans and why?
• Why do I feel so hurried?
• What would the people I love tell me I should remember, but it makes me feel weird/that they are wrong? Could they be right?

2. Then let your hand and pen write the answer. Don’t edit. Don’t hesitate. Don’t delete or score out. Don’t judge. Just let it be said.

3. You can do whatever you like with what you wrote. Leave it. Read it. Burn it (in the sink!). Bury it. Build on it.

Whatever comes out, it’s never wasted. The point is that everything is a process – it doesn’t matter what the “end result” is. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the things you do with a pay-off or defined result in mind can be the most frustrating? If we decide not to control, but to witness instead, we can’t be disappointed. We can only end up noticing, being curious, which is a much more creative and pleasant place than judgement (for good or ill).

Here, you are paying heed to that gorgeous, complex, frustrating-as-hell, magnificent universe that is you. That’s all.

I rarely read my diary entries back. But very unusually, I’m reading back over the last two and a half years right now; it’s unplanned research for two current projects. That was never the point when I wrote them, of course, but the past is another place that’s useful to visit. And while I remember that Gill I’m meeting there, I am not her – I’m a descendent. A very pleasant and unexpected by-product of the re-read is I’m full of compassion for the poor soul she was — she was having a horrible time — and I’m also really proud of her. Finally, I’m grateful to her that she wrote it all down, so I can look back over the journey.

As a writer, this is weirdly useful. I’ve almost 50 years’ worth of this stuff: it’s like a fisherman’s rope in the sea, now heaving with mussels. Every one is a ‘Gill’ of course, but so many of them would be otherwise lost to me, or rewritten by the convenience of false-memory if I didn’t have these live witness statements, with all their ugly, naive, half-seeing present-moment-nesses.

Five year-old me would be proud. I have no doubt. The wise mother of the woman I am now, in fact. As she says, “Will you come and play with me today?” 🙂