“Creation, you see, requires continual therapy.”

– William Least Heat-Moon, Writing Blue Highways

__________

“Two years of one day at a time, sets and reps, iron and woodwork therapy, fear and trembling, prayer and God, and I stood upright.”

– Dave Draper, A Glimpse in the Rear View

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Writing as therapy:

Cheap

Quick

Private

Repeatable

Sustaining

Immediate

Adaptable

Simple

Daily

Forever.

“Here is my secret: I don’t mind what happens.”  

– Jiddu Krishnamurti, quoted in Practical Living by Brian Enos

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“As long as an idea stays in your head it is perfect. But perfect things are never real. Immediately put an idea down into words or in a sketch, or as a cardboard prototype. Now your idea is much closer to reality because it is imperfect.”

– Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

__________

A reminder to self: the glory is in the doing not the reflecting.

The giving not the receiving.

The attempting not the perfecting.

I will resolutely stand by this methodology of fragments.

I will blurt out ideas as they are emitted.

I will not seek to hone, polish and render them into a state of perfection.

I seek not fool’s gold but interludes of solace.

I write as a form of adventure: I seek new ways of looking at the old self: me.

And there is always a parade of old selves to view when you make a habit of setting down new thoughts.

“Learn by doing because your best teacher is experience. You’re the best teacher of yourself, because you understand yourself better than anyone else. If you’re thoroughly dedicated and study something deeply, you can teach yourself whatever you need to know.”

– Rod Judkins, Make Brilliant Work

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“Once you have determined to do something, the less time you allow to elapse until you act, the better. A failed action, done quickly, will improve your confidence more than one done after great procrastination, even if it succeeds…

…Dynamic people take more actions in one morning than most people take in a month. The goal is to take many more actions in a given time period than you normally do. Start slowly, try to take even just two actions in a day, and increase from there.”

– Phil Stutz, Lessons for Living

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How can you arrive at an answer only worked out in your head?

The only way to know for sure is to use the hands: to grasp, pick up, try, experiment, take action.

Everything else is mere speculation.

You don’t want to be a fence sitter.

It’s healthy every now and then to make a firm decision and strike out in the direction of Action.

Keep what works, or discard.

Remember, it is all self-education.

You don’t have to create a masterpiece.

But you do have to create.

Be brave enough to start!

“My point is simply this: Whatever circumstances life brings you, you will be more likely to succeed and find happiness if you take responsibility for making your decisions well instead of complaining about things being beyond your control. Psychologists call this having an “internal locus of control,” and studies consistently show that people who have it outperform those who don’t. So don’t worry about whether you like your situation or not. Life doesn’t give a damn about what you like. It’s up to you to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it and then find the courage to carry it through.”

– Ray Dalio, Principles

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“Sunrise doesn’t last all morning
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day 
Seems my love is up 
And has left you with no warning 
It’s not always gonna be this grey 

All things must pass
All things must pass away”

– George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

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In a week where I have felt the creep of self-pity, it is satisfying to be reminded of simple truths.

I must take responsibility for my own actions.

I need to be adaptable.

This morning necessitated a pep talk: I had to face the reality of a day filled with hard work, despite my reluctance.

I met the challenge and survived (and I don’t think anyone was able to pick up on my initial reticence).

But now the day is nearing its end.

And I need to remember that all things must pass.

I no longer need the tough love of the morning.

The end of the day needs gentler words, that soothe and reassure.

A reminder that it is Ok to struggle.

I take the opportunity to step out out of the hurried stream of activities the day demands. I settle down with a great book, detach and lose my mind.

Tomorrow I might need a kick up the backside.

But tonight, tonight is mine to indulge, unwind and escape reality.

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

– U2, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

__________

“You must realize, Mr. Dunne, the universe is a library. When I was a young man, I searched the stacks of the branch near my house in Palermo, in Buenos Aires. My fondest hope was to find the single volume that would tell me everything I must know in order to survive.”

– Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in Borges and Me: an Encounter by Jay Parini

__________

I’ve always been someone in search of a system of living.

I’ve longed for an explanation of the meaning of it all.

I’ve craved guidance about where and how to take the next step.

Alas, it hasn’t happened yet.

What I have gradually come to realise is that I must be responsible for the creation of my own system.

There is no one Way.

No single answer, but many questions.

There is no enlightenment, only progress.

So I take ideas from here, there, everywhere.

Keep some, drop a few; accumulate a way of living quilted from the ideas of others.

I don’t ned faith in my system – I know it is eternally imperfect.

There is no belief needed other than in the limitless abundance of available knowledge.

I simply have to try, be curious and resist my natural inertia.

If I stay on the look-out, I may confidently strike out in the direction of a purposeful life.

Or, as is the case more times than not, I wander around the wilderness in search of a path.

But what an adventure!

A modest quest, just for me.

Long may I fail to find what I’m looking for.

“You see, there’s something else I’m going to do, something I must do – only I don’t know what it is. That’s why I go round painting and taping and drawing and writing and that, because it may be one of them. All I know is, this isn’t it for me.”

– John Lennon, quoted in John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie

__________

“I don’t know what else to do so I write. It’s my way of seeing the world.”

– Jim Harrison, quoted in Conversations with Jim Harrison, edited by Robert DeMott

__________

Who am I? What do I want to achieve? How should I spend my days? What is my purpose?

All great questions, if a little ambitious.

Mostly I answer with ignorance and uncertainty.

Then I try to get closer to a more precise answer by uncovering what others have got to say.

I read and write as a sort of quest: I am seeking some meaning and some structure to my life.

This journey has been haphazard and would be frustratingly imprecise for another to follow in my steps.

But it’s the only way I know how.

I’m leaning in to what makes my brain light up.

It’s mostly discovery generated from curiosity.

All my thoughts appear as small pieces; I’ve not found enough to see a pattern emerging, but nothing I have learnt so far has put me off my pursuit.

I will keep seeking, observing, gathering, and reflecting.

Perhaps the most useful lesson has been the power of sharing these discoveries.

Even if nobody reads this, its composition has helped me to gain a little clarity.

I’ve put something new in my box of knowledge and can now dive back into infinity.

“It has a slapdash and vigour and sometimes hits an unexpected bull’s-eye. But what is more to the point is my belief that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.”

– Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary

__________

“One Saturday, after spending the morning in the laboratory, I bought a fat notebook, and settled down to writing my own statement of what I believed about my place in the world. I wrote for page after page, with a sense of freedom and release. I was objectifying doubts and miseries, pushing them to arm’s length. When I put down my pen, after several hours, I had a feeling that I was no longer the same person who had sat down at the writing table. It was as if I had been studying my face in a mirror, and learned something new about myself. From then on, I used my journal as a receptacle for self-doubt, irritation and gloom, and by doing so I wrote myself back into a state of optimism.”

– Colin Wilson, Dreaming To Some Purpose

__________

The books I like to read are more concerned with observations than solutions.

Treatises don’t appeal to me – I prefer the inner workings and fresh insights found in a writer’s diary.

These are free from prescriptions and carefully laid out arguments.

I find it hard to settle on definitive answers to life’s questions and enjoy reading others’ struggles with the same.

I like a writer’s ideas discovered on the fly, not those rooted in dogma or rendered inert from repetition.

Writing with an open mind.

A diary or journal might be less organised than a traditional book, but it has the advantage of easier digestion.

There is less for me to unpack whilst reading.

I relish spontaneity of thought.

It’s the only way I can write.

Bits here and there, assembled, disassembled, reassembled, with the purpose discovered along the way.

Imperfect, yes, but somehow the writing feels more free.

And so do I.

“1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.    

1:2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;    

1:3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram…”

– The Gospel of Matthew, The Bible (King James Version)

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“In the second place, Coleridge not only read books with minute attention, but he also habitually passed from any given book he read to the books to which that book referred.”

– John Livingstone Lowes, The Road to Xanadu – A Study in the Ways of the Imagination

__________

We all begin somewhere.

All my reading is based on what came before.

Books are begotten by books.

An endless chain of inspiration and sustenance.

What is my reading genealogy?

There is no straight and steady line.

There are many tangents.

The more books I read the more options I have.

I can discard books that don’t connect.

But I keep reading, happy in the knowledge that my own intellectual lineage is uniquely my own.

No one else on this planet has read exactly the same books as me.

Just like my personality, it’s gratifying to reflect that my reading gives me a unique view of the world.

Its the same for everyone else.

The idea of following a guided reading list fills me with revulsion.

Although I am a compulsive reader, that compulsion comes from within.

I pick up on what interests me and can happily ignore the rest.

Who’s keeping score?

There are no gospels dedicated to me.

It’s personal.

“When I was young, people knew I wanted to be a writer—probably because I kept telling them—and often foisted notebooks upon me, as gifts. For a day or so, the fantasy of inscribing wisdom onto various lavishly bound pages was quite entrancing. But everything I wrote was dumb. I knew I was supposed to fill the pages with great wisdom, drafting whole stories and poems, or personal revelations of breathtaking import. But I couldn’t hack it. Things popped into my head and I wrote them down, fragmentarily, with no resemblance to what someone had taught me, or I’d made up myself, was the proper writing of proper literature. And then, ashamed of myself, I’d stop. My bedroom held quite the collection of fancy notebooks with writing only on the first few pages.”

– Daniel Handler, And Then? And Then? What Else?

__________

“Yet, I have never kept a diary. Or I have tried, but it never stuck. Again and again I would begin: with a very short entry, or else with a long one that would come to stand on its own, there in the beginning of a notebook, followed by all of those blank pages. I don’t know if, when I wrote essays, I was actually returning I to the same space, if somehow I had managed to get back to those empty pages, managed to get back to a pasture of thought. And now that it is done, I am keeping a real diary for the first time in my life, or is it a pasture, mostly because when I can’t, or don’t have time, to work on my novel, I can still write there. Sometimes I trick myself when writing in my notebook; sometimes I end up working on the novel after all, in those pages. And that is the best reason to return to it, that it brings me closer to something I haven’t otherwise been able to get to, or that can’t get to me.” I want to go further into my writing, into my thinking. ‘And do I?'”

– Amina Cain, A Horse at Night

__________

I cannot bear the pressure of a notebook.

There is an automatic commitment, that once started, it must be finished.

I don’t like to keep my writing within such a tight hold.

I build up ideas and collect thoughts as fragments.

If I have to imagine my writing as being part of a cohesive whole, if what I write now had to follow what I wrote yesterday, I would freeze.

Too much at stake.

I have never finished a notebook.

Give me a pad of paper and I can fly.

When I finish writing I can tear the sheets from it; the pad reverts back to emptiness, and I can take away my thoughts and put them somewhere else.

Every time I sit down to write I have a blank pad in front of me. No evidence of yesterday’s writing, and no thought of tomorrow.

Each day the writing is brand new.

I am free.

But do I have anything worth writing?

No? Then I can simply remove the page, take it to the bin, and start again tomorrow.

“[11 pm] My face is all twisted up in a wry expression because I just reread parts of my journal from last summer. By July I’d already gotten the idea for Karateka. I could have finished the damn thing last summer, if I’d worked as hard and steadily as I am now. But who knows? Maybe all that time to mull it over and draw ultimately useless pictures is why it’s going so well now. Maybe if I’d plunged in prematurely I’d have made a mess of it. Certainly, I wouldn’t have shot the film. I guess I can’t really wish to have done anything differently.”

– Jordan Mechner, The Making of Karateka

__________

“Our senses by themselves are dumb. They take in experience, but they need the richness of sifting for a while through our consciousness and through our whole bodies. I call this “composting.” Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen, heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories.”

– Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

__________

Time is not the enemy.

Regret can be reframed as, “not yet.”

Anything could be done sooner but would it be done better?

It’s reassuring to focus on what I can do now, not on what I could or should have done before.

Everything needs it’s time to gestate.

I can never be a precocious nineteen-year-old like Jordan, designing my first hit computer game.

I was never a precocious nineteen-year-old. I cannot compare myself.

Can I be a precocious forty-two-year-old?

Does it work like that?

I regret not trying, striving, seeking some purposeful creative life when I was a teenager.

How many opportunities did I miss?

Time for another reframing exercise.

Perhaps some of us require a little longer to bear fruit.

Maybe this is the perfect time to begin.