MY high school friends have been journaling for several months now. We go to restos and cafes where they can create beautiful pages for their journals while I taste-test the menu items that can pass as part of the carnivore diet.
I’m supposed to be writing this column while they’re journaling but when they ask if I’m writing, I’m actually checking out Facebook, and ordering more food.
So, for me, journaling is equivalent to food and Facebook. But my friends have given me an assignment as my contribution to their hobby: to provide the prompt for their journaling task for the day. Only to tell me that all I have to do is Google for that and voila!
That’s exactly what I did on Thursday, I Googled and found this prompt: Create a daily mantra for living a joyful, abundant life. Which made me think, Hmmm, I can use that for my Morning Pages.
Sometime after the pandemic lockdowns, I suddenly couldn’t write anything. Writer’s block galore. For six months. Because I had become too tired of writing about the same topic: the pandemic.
During the latter part of those six months of no writing, I happened to read Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way.” That’s how I learned about her advice on writing the Morning Pages daily—three pages in longhand—to awaken the inner muse. And that should be first thing in the morning.
She had another valuable tip: to have an Artist’s Date every week. That means going out alone, with the hope of discovering new things.
So, those are her two tools: the Morning Pages and the Artist’s Date. Which finally inspired me to write again, paving the way for my return to columnizing.
There are days when I still run out of words to express my thought bubbles, but I think that’s expected from someone who uses simple words.
I was once accused of using simple words as if it’s a sin. But I love simple words—because that’s all I know.
I did buy Norman Lewis’s “Word Power Made Easy.” I think that was in the ‘90s. Merely buying a book, though, is not enough. I have to read it. And that’s a challenge when it comes to “Word Power” which is like a textbook. It could have worked if I started reading it when I was still in school. By the time I bought it, though, I have already passed the CPA board exams and have had enough of textbooks.
And so my words have remained simple. There’s no legalese here. I can’t write formal business letters. The only complicated word I know must be “denouement” because I love the way it’s pronounced.
Even the books I love to read are those that use simple words otherwise I won’t be able to absorb the lessons they’re trying to convey in between the lines. That’s why I prefer to read a book’s first paragraph and middle pages before buying it, which is impossible to do at Big Bad Wolf Books where books have plastic covers that the sales staff don’t allow to be removed.
It doesn’t mean my BBW purchases have been blah due to the plastic-cover rule. The two books I’m currently reading were bought at BBW and they’re both okay, thank you.
It should be obvious by now that writing and reading are two of my hobbies. Will I now add journaling to that? Hmmm.
