One of my goals for this year was to work on quieting my mind. I find that there are constantly thoughts racing through my head and sometimes at night I spend more time thinking about a blog post I want to write than sleeping. The problem there is that I tend to have all these ideas, then I fall asleep and when it comes to trying to take them out of my mind I struggle. I have started writing down my thoughts using pen and paper and I have found this to be such a freeing experience… apart from my hand, which has not written this much in over twenty years.
I picked up a notebook, just lying around in my office, not being used. and started scribbling my thoughts on a page. and that led to me writing my thoughts about what I want to achieve in the year. Soon I was venting about my workday on these pages, and slowly I was just scribbling all kinds of thoughts down. It was a mash up on nearly everything and I feel like my brain feels so much more manageable. This is not an essay on how to journal or anything remotely like that, I just felt the need to write an appreciation of this new hobby in my life. Is this a hobby?
When setting goals for the year there were three things I wanted to do;
- Write more in my notebook
- Blog more
- Start writing essays
All these are related and all these goals interconnect. I was always setting a goal to blog more and never really got back into the habit, but I thought that now that I was scribbling some notes about my reading into a notebook, maybe I could turn that into posts, but it has been a few months since my last blog entry. In fact, besides the International Booker Prize long list, I think my last post was my 2026 intentions back in early January. I think that post covers a lot of the same themes as this one. However, I am trying to reinforce my thoughts. I have hit a barrier where I write into a notebook and then I felt like I was done with the progress. I think this is the same barrier I have in the past when it comes to rewriting. I have this problem where I will write something down and now it is out of my head, I feel like I am free from those thoughts and never return to them…until I write about the same thing again later in life. I have heard of authors who would write a draft and lock it away, then rewrite the same story much later from memory. Maybe that is what I need to do or maybe this is what I am doing now with covering the same topic again without looking at it previously.
One of the reasons I mentioned blogging and writing essays separately is because I was worried about just writing lists or reviews and ignoring the skill I want to develop. So, my goal was to write in my notebook (is it a journal?) a few times a week. Try to post weekly and then write an essay at least once a month. I have failed this goal, but I feel like I am making progress with myself. Maybe the goal is not to have a goal but to continue writing in any form. I do not even know if this is something I will post but taking it out of my head into my journal and. now, typing this feels like progress. Next, I want to try remembering the thoughts I wrote about some of the novels I have read recently and maybe turning them into actual reviews for my blog.
This is a learning experience for me, and I have found that the act of writing with pen and paper has been a great way to remember my thoughts and feelings. Not every idea or thought written turns into something more but it has been amazing to just disconnect from my phone, my computer and any screen and just try to process my mind. The notepad is not pretty, my handwriting is not neat, but there is a phrase I keep hearing when I explore journalling on YouTube; “messy pages, quiet mind”. The focus on finding mental clarity is the goal, it does not matter what the pages look like. Although going down journalling rabbit holes I must remind myself that these people are being performative in making this content and they are not showing the mess.
Sure, I would love a nicer notebook, but I find this free one has been useful. Who knows, maybe I will invest in something better, but I do not see myself investing in washi tapes, stamps and turning this into an art project. As a left-handed person, I probably cannot use a fountain pen, although I love the idea, maybe gel pens are safer. I also love the idea of carrying around a little traveller’s notebook wherever I go but I work from home, so I hardly leave the house.
While I never want to make this practice performative, I want to develop better journalling processes and find a style that works for me. At the moment, I put everything into the same book, but is that the best idea? I have no idea. I have seen too many videos where people hold up a pile of books and tell me about their journal eco system and that feels excessive. Then I think, do I want my thoughts on books and media in the same place as my rants about work. I am the only one that reads these pages, so I do not know if it matters. Maybe dividing them into sections would be useful. I do love the idea of a commonplace book. For those who do not know what a commonplace book is, it is like a living encyclopaedia of things you have learnt, quotes you like and maybe more. This appeals to me but in a sense, I treat my blog as a way to documents my thoughts, I do write reviews (not as much as I should), I keeps lists, maybe I need to add other information here. I would like to do more movies or TV shows, more brain dumps, more documenting of what I have learnt.
I am not sure if this was a blog post, an essay or a brain dump. I enjoyed writing this and I think I might even edit and post this. Not for any reason but to store it and who knows what will become of this. I do find it interesting that I started off writing and ended up realising that blogging and commonplace books might be the same things for me. I do feel the need to write some books reviews now; I want to share more thoughts on my reading challenge my wife made for my birthday. Will I write more about my journalling experiences? Probably, I am still trying to learn, and I find writing a useful tool for understanding my thoughts.
I could relate to so much in this post, Michael!
I am a chronic insomniac, (though just occasionally I am a recovering insomniac) and one of the things that stops my mind from racing around is doing as you do: writing it down. I have some very ordinary A4 lined hardback journals that I buy cheaply from an office supplies store and that is what I use to write my thoughts about the book. Sometimes, I can close the journal and fall asleep, and I think that is because lying awake with what I want to say/write means my brain is trying to store it, and once it’s written down, that pressure is gone.
Sometimes when a book relates to something in my life, I have a little meditation or rant about that which is not, strictly speaking about the book, (and those thoughts very rarely make it onto the blog) but in general those journals are for books and they are a fantastic reference and record of my reading. I’ve been doing it 1998, before I started blogging and now I have 50+ of these journals. I number them and have an Excel file so that I can locate which book is in which journal.
As for the other stuff, when I was at work and stressed in the way that most professionals are, I used to keep diaries on and off, to offload my frustrations but then lose the habit, probably because I wasn’t feeling the angst any more.
For a while, I also had a small notebook that went with me everywhere and I would just write random thoughts in it, observations about people and places, ideas for stories, scraps of dialogue that overheard. I also kept a travel dairy version when I was overseas too.
I think the point about all this is that the process of writing whatever it is by hand has an impact on the brain that is liberating. Sometimes it helps us to remember things, and sometimes it allows release. Writing on a screen doesn’t do it. I’m not a neuroscientist so I don’t know why, but as a teacher, I knew instinctively that getting kids to write daily by hand improved their progress in almost everything. Some magic is going on in the brain when we write!
I loved your post, it made me think, wonder, and laugh! I often think to myself I’d like to blog more, but hearing you say it it seems a bit broad, may be I should be thinking ‘what do I want to blog more about?’ and try and be more specific. Which leads me to wondering about my own journaling and how much I enjoy it (in a notebook with a pen) and how important actual writing is, children are taught cursive script because it gets the spelling into their heads and it’s no different for us adults with developing our ideas (I think). And you made me laugh by saying you’d have a travel notebook but you never leave the house! Very funny, please write more. . .
Great post Michael. I enjoy using the bullet journal method and find that updating it every night before bed helps me let go of tasks I need to do or things I need to remember for the next day. I’d love to hear more about the reading challenge your wife made for your birthday, so I hope you write about it soon.