I get home and rush upstairs to my nightstand. In the drawer – night cream, hand cream, a book light, some incense. A tin of Bag Balm, a stretched-out ponytail elastic. Several pens, pencils, marker and highlighters. At the bottom – the notebooks. A five subject with a black faux leather cover and pockets in each divider. A lime green wide ruled single subject – thin and easily transported. A red cardboard-covered three subject in a college rule with very dark blue lines. Different pages for different needs, different thoughts.
I start a page, and lose concentration. Though I love the look of the fluid black script on the crisp, clean page I must stop. Flip the page. Start anew. If by chance the ink leaked to the following page, I must skip it as well. New thoughts in crisp new pages.
Lists, plans, screenplays of my future. Pipe dreams in ballpoint pen. Anger in felt tip, organization in gel tip. I marvel at the beauty of my penmanship – can you believe I received “Es” in handwriting back in elementary school? Now I sometimes write just to see the pattern, notice the color contrast, see the art within the black and white.
Writing calms me, helps me sleep, helps me re-energize. Writing organizes my thoughts, intensifies my emotions or calms me down. Writing prepares me for the day ahead. Writing is real and writing is me. I try to replace it with the keyboard, I play with fonts and points. I write blog posts in Word before I copy them to this site. It's not the same. I have tried to transcribe my journal writings to the screen, but I get distracted, antsy, self-conscious. I am very aware that this is not a random rambling I am posting, but my gut, my soul, my me. It's unnerving.
Often I prefer to blog, to type. It's quick, I am funny, quippy, entertaining. It’s lighter, it’s faster, it can be quite raw and real. I have an audience and I have feedback. Then I go into stages where I drive down the highway, heading toward the orange and pinkness of the rush hour sky, contemplating which spiral to retrieve and which pen to mark it's pages.
Originally published on my first blog, which is now defunct. Going through the private archives from around the time I first did The Artists Way and found this post and had to share...
