Still Not Journalling

Write without a plan sounds easy enough. Like all generic advice.

→ Make sure you get enough sleep
→ Drink plenty of water
→ Eat protein
→ Workout
→ Wear SPF
→ Be financially literate
→ Be culturally aware
→ Cure cancer, save the environment, and while you are at it, end all wars

So in case it is not immediately clear, I dislike generic advice. No, scratch that, I despise generic advice. I also despise people dispensing said generic advice. But that is a chat for another day.

So, coming back to writing without a plan. Goes against the very grain of communication. Messaging has to be tailored to your audience. So, when you write without a plan, without an agenda, who are you writing for? And why?

If no one is ever going to read what you have written, what is the point of it all?

My writing is performative. Has been since I discovered blogging. Two decades later, every random thought or note I capture has the hidden agenda of becoming a blog post. I need the dopamine from my readers’ admiration. I crave the validation.

There have been times that I said I only write for myself now. But those were not my double standards. Those were my fatigue with the circus of blogging. We took a creative outlet and turned it into an income stream. When you transform a passionate wordsmith to an algorithmic techie, the fatigue is bound to set in.

“But, don’t you claim to be an algorithmic techie?”

No, I claim to be a creative geek. Thank you very much. The two are very different. Even if they are not, I’d like to remain in this illusion of my own making please.

So, writing without a plan. Of course I am talking about journalling. You’d have figured that out by now. I am sure. No? Ok, so I’m not as good of a communicator as I thought. For someone who harbours a not-so-secret ambition of being a writer some day, this is a bad thing. A very bad thing indeed.

Why I don’t journal? Many reasons.

I already said my brain is wired for performative writing. I’m still trying to learn writing without the expectation of someone reading it. Because I’ve been there, and I’ve been burnt by it.

My diary has been read and I’ve been mocked, berated and bullied. For what? Having emotions, having thoughts, for processing them in private instead of making a scene? I’d think it is a very mature thing for a teenager to do, especially one who had no close friends and grew up in 80s & 90s where homes did not have the sort of open & honest environments that exist today.

Come to think of it, my own teen does this. I know she does. And she’ll probably say something similar in her fourth decade.

Circle of life, I call it.

So that’s two reasons I don’t journal.

The third is frivolous.

I don’t do well with prompts. “Write everything in life you are thankful for today” has me staring at the blank page for 7 minutes before I give up & pick my phone.

I don’t write like that. My writing stems from an irritation or an observation. Usually, an observation that causes irritation. Let LinkedIn change its localisation settings & watch me go on a rant. On LinkedIn, about LinkedIn.

I also don’t do well with self-examining prompts. “What do you want from life?”

How do I know what I want?
I only know what I know.
I don’t know what I don’t know.
And what I don’t know, I can’t want.
So, how do I answer that?
What if I want the wrong things?

Then there is: “Describe how you feel. Why do you feel like that?” If I had the language to express that, the emotional depth & the skills to analyse that, I would not be journalling. I’d be running a therapy clinic. You see, how I am circumventing the question?

I rotated the pen twice in my fingers before writing this down.

I am scared. Journalling scares me because of what it might do.

Unleash the hidden.
Upset the balance.
Smash the facade of personality.

What if underneath, I am a rotten person? I know this is an irrational fear. I am what I am. And I may not even be that rotten. Only I have never really allowed myself to go there.

So here we are. Still not journalling.

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I’ve been inspired by my friend Pallavi to be more creative. She swears by journaling. I’ve given it a shot, multiple shots actually. But the writing is always performative. So, here I am, turning a set of scribbled notes to a blog post. As aways.

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