This morning Anne Helen Petersen asked in Culture Study what people’s morning routines are like. Answers varied from routines like mine to routines unlike mine to no routine. You can see my routine here if you like.1 One line of mine was “After the first cup of coffee, I write three pages in my monthly journal. (It’s on a tablet. At the end of the month I delete the journal. I hate having them around.)” All day I’ve been receiving comment replies, mostly variations on this: “Wow! Thank you for giving me permission to delete my journals at the end of the month. I didn’t know I was “allowed” to do this!!!!”
I’ve already written about cleaning/purging/deleting and throwing out old hardcopy journals so I won’t rehash that, although I’ll say I’m remodeling my kitchen right now, and a month of doing dishes in the bathroom sink is forcing me to rethink my relationship with all the ceramics.
I’ve done many kinds of writing over my lifetime, from academic papers and research, to grants, which someone recently pointed out is a lot like creative nonfiction infused with research, to reports and technical writing, personal narratives and even some poetry.2 And I’ve written journals, but they are awful, self-conscious things almost invariably describing ideas, actions, and feelings I’m ashamed of and never want to revisit.
While I hate reading my old journals, reading my own posts in this substack doesn’t bother me. It’s the difference between writing for an audience or not, I suppose; have I carefully chosen my words, riffled through thoughts I’d like to pair up or others I ought to pare down, omitted what isn’t fit for anyone to read…ever?
One day, maybe, I might collect some of the personal narratives, like posts from this substack, and assemble them into something resembling a memoir. I know the writing ranges from reflective to descriptive and hand-wringing to finger-pointing, from silly to deadly serious, and that’s about right. A photo album in words is how such a token might be described, something my someday-grandkids might like to see. Or not.
There’s plenty of other junk to delete from life in the meantime. Extra crap on the calendar. Redundancy in organizational strategies. More shit in the cabinets I mentioned in the post I linked above.3 I generally have no problem with this, albeit that’s third-party stuff…not feelings. Not photos. Not bits of handmade loveliness my children brought me from preschool.4 Obviously I cannot delete those. Into which bucket does personal narrative memoir-type writing fall, since it emanates from my personal experience but also comprises a lot of navel-gazing which in itself can be some pretty revolting self-absorption?
While I ponder that, I’ll continue to pursue ever more efficient methods of ruthlessly deleting journal entry after journal entry, making space in the world for more beautiful things.
Speaking of more beautiful things
A couple of weeks ago I was up in Browning doing some language work and drove to Two Medicine on the east side of GNP. No moose this time5 but a lovely red-tailed hawk let me photograph him or her. I had just learned the Blackfoot word for red-tailed hawk so that was an especially meaningful sighting.
You might have to be a paying subscriber to Culture Study to see this, I’m not sure. But you should become a paying subscriber if you aren’t one, bc CS is fkg great.
I haven’t written any fiction. I know my limits; like singing, it’s just not something I’m good at.
See kitchen remodel also
I’m looking at you, pasta necklace!
In June I spotted a mama and brand-new twins just across the lake!
There always seems to be one line in you entries that sticks out to me. I wish I had been writing them down. They would probably come together like a poem. This time it is "Making space in the world for more beautiful things." I love that.