IF: diary

This is daily reality for me: the before and after of my Morning Pages ritual.

I kid you not. 

Morning Pages are 3 pages you write first thing in the morning. They can be about anything, anything at all, but they usually end up freeing you from stuff that you would otherwise carry around all day! I've been doing them for two years. It is my diary, yes, but it is so much more than that.

The truth of my mood is very simple: if I do not write I rot. Simple, huh? Yeah but easy to forget too, whenever I "forget" to do my Morning Pages... I think is because the daily act of putting pen to paper before doing anything else reminds me of my personal truths, of who I am and what I want, and allows me to "leave the drama in the page", as Julia Cameron puts it. I now think I could have saved myself entire years of therapy if I'd known about Morning Pages before!

I like to think of my monsters (and dramas and fears and anguishes) as dangerous baobabs who'll eat up my pretty planet; and of Morning Pages as the daily act of plucking them:

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince said to me later on. "When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work," the little prince added, "but very easy."

 

You should try it sometime, I know you have horrible voices too, that desguise as the rosebushes of responsability or coherence and that attack you and your dreams. Let them rot forever in the pit of a diary!