June 8: #25 Journal for 15 minutes straight, direct writing

Phil: I try to journal as much as I can, but I admit, it’s not as much as it really could or should be. Sometimes I write by hand in a reporters notebook I keep with me. Most other times I write in an online journal I’ve loosely kept since like 2013 online. I like to keep that going so I can see the succession over many years. But journaling for me is usually quick and on-the-go. So sitting down for 15 minutes and just direct writing was pretty interesting. It felt like I was able to really officially sum up all the fucked up places my head was going at the moment, and morph it into one or two general messages or goals or whatever. The main thought process I was able to identify through this form of journaling for 15 minutes straight was that I had a desire in me to trim some fat in terms of my daily life. I feel I have taken on a lot lately and need to start thinking about how to most strategically use my time. And, in relation to yesterday’s challenge of watching a TED talk, I want to ensure that by revisiting my daily priorities, I can do so in a way that fosters community and relationships as best as possible, using the ingredients I have from over a year of hard work on myself. Anyway, that’s today’s lesson. But I also know there’s a lesson to be learned every time I sit down and just write like this. I also feel I need to do it more.

Bruce: I’ve done this before and spend an awful lot of my time writing, but journaling has curiously never been a regular practice of mine. I got this challenge idea thanks to Tim Ferriss, who recommends 3 minutes of free-writing every morning. The 15 minutes went by surprisingly fast. During the three pages of feverish and unusually scrawled writing my hand cramped! I thought I knew where it was going but was surprised at the journey of my perpetual unfiltered writing freny. I ended up rehashing and unpacking some recent experiences that have been haunting me and lingering beneath the surface of my presumed healing. What I can say is that a sort of free-form exorcism happened, like lancing a blister, letting out the pestilent wandering ideas and sorting the feelings I hadn’t known I would focus on. Writing is an obvious panacea to me as a an artist, but there was a nice proud benefit from the simple private act of writing without any of the pressures of creative decisions and the intention of sharing it publicly. The magic of this was the sincere feeling that the preoccupying topic I covered in my direct-writing was sufficiently worked through and then I wasn’t as compelled to dwell on it throughout the day. This might be a new daily practice for me.

Tomorrow's challenge:#8 Yes man day