Belenen (belenen) wrote,
Belenen
belenen

writing: rededicating my journal to imperfect self-examination and memory-making

I've been successful in keeping up with writing for 6 days now, which is my longest streak in at least a year. I think the biggest reason I'm having success is that I have given myself permission to send out things that are unpolished and even unfinished. My usual ritual with writing is to sit down, drink a lot of coffee, put on some music, and focus on a particular topic that all fits together, write it, re-read it and add and subtract and hone and craft until I am sure that I haven't left out anything I wanted to say and haven't implied anything I do not want to say. I hate the feeling of leaving something important out, and I want to make sure that when people read it they see it all, because I don't want to repeat myself and I know that people aren't going to check back to see if I added stuff. With this 22day thing, I decided to just make sure I wrote, no matter how unimportant or badly phrased or incomplete or run-on. Because when I started this thing that is what it was all about. I got more into polishing as I went along and now I rarely write because I just don't have the energy for the 2+ hour perfection ritual. So fuck that, I'm going to keep this as a journal and it's going to be filled with unimportant stuff as well as the meaningful stuff and it's going to be my tool to know and remember by and it's going to be a WIP and sometimes I will go back and edit to add things that need to be part of it. I never wanted this to be a blog but I think my impulse for tidiness made me self-censor anything that wasn't 'up to par.' (in my mind a blog is for the benefit of others, to educate or entertain) I feel like maybe I could educate sometimes but I would suffocate myself with all the things I don't know and don't understand. So, here is my journal, washed and re-dedicated to being an eclectic pile of my ecphorizing.

Looking back, I wrote: 44 entries in 2013, 75 entries in 2012 (also that July was the last time I did the 22 day thing, I didn't make it to 22 though), 46 in 2011, and before that, at least 100 entries a year I'd say, which is what I feel is a healthy amount for me. I'm going to finish this 22day streak and then I have a loose goal of 11 entries per month.
Tags: 22days, writing
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