Woke up thinking about better frameworks for an intellectually honest life. I think the number one thing is handwriting as much as possible. I think typing is okay, too, if you just allow yourself to flow without distractions.

While I don’t see myself going to a Neil Gaiman level absolute devotion to the idea of ‘you can stop writing, but you can’t do anything else.’ I do think I need to drastically cut back on screen time.

 I think some distractions can be healthy if they’re enriching, but most these days I use just to keep myself occupied during emotionally turbulent or physically painful moments. And the brain fog is frequent. Fortunately, even with my whack sleeping ‘schedule’ lately, I seem to have some morning lucidity, especially right now, so I’m riding it as long as possible.

These moleskine musings (which will move to cheaper alternatives in future for sheer convenience) should never feel like work; they should feel necessary. Writing should still be a reflex, even for folks who don’t rely on the written word for their livelihood as I have, and I still do for my sanity. I lost something by moving away from pen-and-paper. The damned phone really did only contribute to feeling more disconnected…

I refuse to engage in the exercise of repeating empty phrases like “I have nothing to say” or stating the obvious like “the walls are white.” When I have nothing to say, I simply go about my day and see what happens. I always manage to write something, or at least, do something writing-adjacent like edit or post on one of my two websites.

I truly want to help fellow artists, especially now, with rediscovering their spark and freeing us all from the endless feedback loop of “content creation” and go back to simply being messy and creative. Come what may, the gems will come in time. I’m still pulling away from ‘content’ and returning to ‘logging,’ But logging for its own sake is still “content.” I keep telling myself to post even the ‘crap’ because it’s there and deleting it, funny enough, takes more energy than just accepting it for what it is. And the more I choose to publish, the less I must continue to kick around in my archive. I need to stop trying to resurrect everything; keep what can still serve me and ditch the rest. I need to prune and post much more intentionally and stop being so damn indecisive. 

Even as I break out of poor habits and holding patterns and make interesting discoveries about the wider world and my own self, I’m not even halfway to reasserting my own creative potential.