Do You Know Your Source of Sadness? Journaling Does
Posted by Mari L. McCarthy on Wed, Feb 22, 2012 @ 01:09 PM
Sometimes I'm just so sad. It's a feeling, sort of like a squeeze on my heart and lungs and stomach all at once. It feels like a sickness and a craziness and a sense of total failure combined. I inhale the nasty concoction with my morning toothpaste and suffer from it all day long.
Things happen. Shit, for instance. Shit happens. My computer blows up. My relative disses me. My contributions are ignored. My car breaks down. My creations are ridiculed. I begin to feel useless and stupid.
Why are some days fortified by indomitable optimism while others slog by, overcome by misery? And if the variation is due simply to the fractal nature of reality, how can I suffer less from the fluctuations?
In short, what can I do to make the sad stuff seem less sad?
Well, there are a bunch of cures. You can go out to a movie or ask a friend to dinner or get a pedicure. You can join a choir or a volleyball team or read a novel or take a painting class. There are something like a million thirteen ways to circumvent the blues.
But the most immediate, direct, anytime accessible solution is to journal. To get out the old pen and paper and write it out. Whatever "it" is.
By the way, that is an appropriate prompt at just about any given time: What is "it"?
You pick up the pen and position the paper and bring the two in contact. You let the ink spill a nanosecond ahead of your consciousness. You dance, race, skip with your guide in this way until some end makes its logic obvious.
Then you take a deep breath and read this thing over. What does your writing teach you?
What does my writing teach me? I have only to ask and it is made abundantly clear.
The thing about journal writing is that it speaks directly to your questions, more directly than any other source.
Don't believe me?
Test it out for yourself. Ask your journal, What is happening, what am I supposed to be noticing right now, what's the significance of the current circumstances and environment? Then, reading over your entry, make a note of answers to your question. You can highlight your answers or do whatever you feel like with the answers.
Please share your revelations, ask questions and/or tell us how you did the exercise in the Comments section below and/or … in our brand new Forum: Journal Writing Ideas.
image from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23024164@N06/4757819913/
Damian Gadal