[JOURNAL-ENTRY-027]
terminal\user\jem\journal
In my first deliberate attempt at a bi-weekly entry, I’ve noticed the amount of material I’ve got is nearly double what I usually have. Material. As if the endeavour was akin to pleasing a crowd with bulletproof bulletpoints in a stand-up routine, when I know what I should be focusing on is just the one person, writing.
It feels different this time. Plucking thoughts from thin air and spinning them into legible streams of consciousness is something I have perhaps taken for granted. I think surely my mind doesn’t completely dissolve so quickly as to forget a skill so basic and essential, but I know I haven’t. I think the fact that I brought it up in the first place is a telltale sign that it’s not all broken.
The biggest risk I took from trialling this schedule is letting the responsibility slip through my fingers without realising, occasionally reminded throughout the week with a momentary acknowledgement before resuming my day-to-day.
But in truth, I feel this isn't as important as it used to be; the benefits or feelings of accomplishment are not as potent or immediate. Maybe that’s not the way I should think of it.
Writing has been fantastic therapy, or the closest thing I’ll get to it. When I look back at the volumes I’ve contributed to this project, I see a small room in a library dedicated to me as the subject, and it makes me uncharacteristically proud and truly content with my output.
Because it has all been for me, and done such a world of untarnished, irreplaceable good.
Now I arrive at a point where I feel nothing. Not really, of course, but not knowing how to proceed can produce a numbness. I want to continue to write when I can, so doing it of my own accord when the moment happens or I feel a spark seems logical and accommodating. But will I succumb to that immensely vast vista of freedom then, and fall under the seductive weight of no expectations? Will I watch months tick by with no new entries, no new thoughts or gems of self-improvement to chart over paragraphs? Does that make me worse, not chronicling every noteworthy moment of my life?
I don’t think so. But fuck it, I really don’t know anymore. But I don’t feel so down in the dumps about it either, which is surprisingly a relief.
I feel I have a lot going on right now and things to look forward to, and thus see no void in need of filling to truly satisfy that part of myself that demands seeing the self-improvement, because I am that proof now, in a way that feels strange to admit in writing. And it could all completely vanish tomorrow, yet I’d still happily look for the pieces to put it all together again. Likely in a shape that is different but nonetheless evocative of the core idea. I suppose I’m referring to the events unfolding in my life and on this blog simultaneously.
The images of abandonment I can conjure make it difficult to leave this, because there’s a non-zero chance this will be the last post on this blog. But for all the talk of feeling content with leaving things how they are with an air of finality, I admit I don’t feel like I’m done writing here, at least in the imminent future.
As of late, an ideal I’ve subconsciously grown toward (and perhaps have been for a while) is letting things I have no total control over simply happen or fall into place, no matter where they may end up. The most basic line of reasoning one could imagine, but to me it feels new, or at least recognised by its value properly for the first time.
Too often, I think I can influence events that transpire little by little, in small ways that hopefully result in the best possible outcome. Attempts to secure a lot of personal gain for very little, whether it's socially, economically, or whatever. ‘Never out of maliciousness’ is what I tell myself, but regardless, I think this pattern yields mixed results that I’ve been cherry-picking.
I think the best way I can go about this life is simply living it – a sentiment I believed to be nothing more than inaction, and while you could make that argument, for me, it means letting go of a control that I never really had in the first place.
Not giving up, but choosing to believe that I can keep coming back every time.