- What the hell am I actually thinking?
- How do I share this with others in a manner that they can understand?
These feel like very different questions, but the answers converge. I approach one first because it clarifies my response to the second.
What the hell am I actually thinking? Obviously, my thoughts, very loosely defined—propositional statements, feelings, intuitions—change from moment to moment. One immediate response is a compulsion to then generate a written record of all of the things that I mull over, obsess about, the bits of life that have no reason to have a record. Then, it is just a problem of how much time I’m willing to spend on making such records.
Yet it also doesn’t seem to be an issue about time. I write a lot about my own thoughts. I’ve journaled since I was eleven. But writing into the void has its downsides. Like when you bounce a tennis ball off of a wall in the same spot with the same speed etc. etc., it returns to you in the same manner. The practice resembled a series of hit and run investigations: when I encountered something in my mind that I didn’t like, I dumped/offloaded it on the page. At the time, it felt like relief. Now, I realize that I was avoiding confrontation with thoughts that I was uncomfortable with. I was evading expressing how I felt and thought, even to myself.
So instead of tucking away old journal entries, thoughts, into the ether just to have the same series of thoughts years later, triggered by the same external circumstances, I want to be more intentional about my personal writing practice. Go back to older entries, add new ones, reflect on what my thoughts are doing by making apparent the scaffolding within which they exist.
Because, to be honest, I am lost in my own head. I am looking for a way out. I am weaving Ariadne’s yarn. There’s no Godly thread, but the practice of telling others what I know and how I’m feeling seems like the best way to tell myself what is going on. Because only when I share with others does it become very apparent the assumptions that I’m making, the leaps in logic otherwise hidden.
That’s why I ask, How do I share this with others in a manner that they can understand? Two things are different about this ”digital garden” project, that I hope will differentiate it from the past thirteen years: I want my thoughts to have a home.
- Though I’ve used Roam/Obsidian for my studies across years, this is my first deep dive into using such an explicit, though very natural, structure to express personal thoughts.
- As a public journal with a (potential) audience, this means accountability in terms of legibility, coherence, and style.
Both of these hopefully mean that if I find myself in the same loop of thought, I will have some account of the fact; I might be able to see what’s changing and what’s not; I could reflect on that juncture that I’m about to take and maybe decide on a better one.
You’re welcome to take a look around (re: point 2 hah) and I’d love to hear any thoughts or reflections or comments. This is very much a work-in-progress, and it would be lovely to weave in conversations with you.
Finally, I was very inspired by my friend Dana’s blog! The directness, thoughtfulness, vulnerability of it. (Please have a look!)
(P.S. This is my seventh pass at this page and I’m really glad that I can keep changing it…)