Putting off journaling day after day
Smoothing the return to practice
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My journaling practice has been in an ebb.
This is not something I'm comfortable admitting (to myself or to you), and yet, the ebb is here.
The ebb is natural.
When clients share the ebbs of their creative practices, I'm quick to offer questions that guide toward reassurance and trust in the process and practice.
And still, I don't like to fully acknowledge my journaling ebbs.
Lately, there have been so many things that I've wanted to write about. So much noticing, so much happening. And... journaling hasn't been the priority it usually is.
As I shared in this video, part of resistance (for me at least) isn't just putting off an action/step/task/practice. It’s also not wanting to even acknowledge the foggy resistance around it. I resist acknowledging resistance. It's a whole dance of avoidance where I just try to keep it to my peripheral view.
And then at the end of that day: I face that journaling didn't happen today, again. I acknowledge that I didn't look at resistance and engage with it in the ways I know how. Onto tomorrow's list it goes...
There's grief in not showing up for myself, when I know journaling is one of the most enduring ways that I can stay connected to my visions and my clarity of heart and mind.
There's frustration in the urgency I'm holding (Why is life moving so fast? Why is rent SO high?!) when I know that journaling is a practice that slows time.
When I think of the affect journaling has on my life, I always think of this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson (which was my number one favorite quote for years)
I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred. I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.
Journaling only asks of a little from us in order to share its fruit: an ounce of our willingness and patience to stick with it for only a sliver of time—even under five minutes, even one sentence. It asks for us to keep saying yes to it, even when life is full, even when it has been days or weeks or months.
Journaling can take its natural ebb.
Here are a few non-exhaustive simple steps that I’ve used to return to journaling the last few days.
I hope this is helpful for you if journaling has also been getting deprioritized lately, even as part of you wants (read: needs) to write.
I remind myself that, like everything else, practices have cycles. Holding life as a creative practice means that I am committed to deepening in trust in my creative practices (including the creative process itself) and in my creative beingness. Part of deepening in trust looks smoothing the return to practice. In other words: returning to practice is part of the practice. I can build a habit toward self-judgement and rumination when my practices ebb, or I can build a habit toward curiosity and kind noticing. I credit the longevity of my practices, in all its natural ebbs and flows, to the latter.
I ask myself if there is something I'm trying to avoid feeling or acknowledging. There usually is and it's usually something I feel compelled to write about, but averse to actually writing. Lately, it's been wordless despair at multi-billion dollar projects of violence. It's also been cherishing my life in so so so many ways and how words fail my cherishment. I feel the gap between the visceral and layered subtleties of life and my ability to document it. This gives me enormous grief. Usually this motivates my practice, sometimes it keeps me from it. Here, I practice noticing, offer compassion—especially to the momentum of my go-go-go mode and the suffering of putting off what makes me feel most connected to life—and explore with gentle inquiry (I go into all of this more here).
I practice with others, especially as a bridge back to journaling after it’s been a while. Sometimes, the moments of returning to a practice that we’ve been putting off can feel too much. I want to do it, but I don’t! In moments like this, I remember to practice connection. I can call up a friend and ask if she wants to journal together for 10 minutes over the phone this evening. When a friend asks me to co-work at a coffeeshop, I can name my resistance out loud and share that I’m going to start by journaling. Moving this practice of solitude into community every so often is very nourishing. I started the journaling circle for a reason :)
If you’re reading this at the time it is sent out, and if you too have been wanting to journal more, then I hope you join us for the journaling circle on the last Sunday of every month.
~~ Please note that we are skipping June and July, but I will still share writing prompts for those months ~~
More info can be found here:
The journaling circle is open to paid subscribers of these letters. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber and support this work (thank you), click that button below.
If you can’t make it, I send out the prompts after, like this:
Paid subscribers: scroll to the bottom of this page to register and get the Zoom link if you haven’t already!
I hope to see you there. Either way, I hope we can all trust the inevitable ebbs and practice the curiosity it takes to meet ourselves there.
-Maggy
PS: I go deeper into all of these practices and more in Finally Face the Page, a pre-recorded workshop in three parts.
I get emails every week from people sharing how impactful it has been for not only their writing practice, but how they relate to resistance in general.
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