bigpost: journalling, spreading ur wings, and a big fat caffine-induced braindump

hello kind soul! 

it is monday at like 9:30, i've just had an energy drink, and i'm about to lock in on a research paper that's kicking my butt rn. 

recently so many things have been challenging me. i feel so overwhelmed so often and have been really discouraged lately. i haven't been taking time for myself. i say that, but i mean i've been binge-watching some shows and doomscrolling regularly, but i don't consider that to be time for myself. honestly i dont know why i even do those things, especially when im doomscrolling even though i have sooo many things to do, and then i'm thinking about all the things that i need to do while scrolling, which is something i dont even really like doing, and it's just a terrible cycle of snowballing anxiety. 

that being said, there is light! 

i've been journaling a bit recently, and it's helped me a lot. i never understood really why people say journalling helps them, it seemed kinda sappy to me i guess the way they explained it. I have a blog where I rant, and I've definitley tried journalling many times before, but those things gave me a different feeling than I've gotten from my recent entries. Following advice from Tara Schuster in her book buy yourself the f*king lilies, which i recommend but I'm only on chapter 3 so I'm not responsible for recommending anything after that, I've been trying to wake up in the morning and -- before I open my phone and start scrolling or open my mouth to eat or drink or yap-- (and yes those are real emdashes, not ai) I journal for three whole pages. If you read the three pages from each day this week (which, if I'm being honest, hasn't happened quite every day in the last week-- i'm not that habitual yet) you probably wouldn't understand the purpose of anything i've written. Some days I started with a good morning, i slept well/not well, etc. Others, I started with something very heavy on my heart, and ended with food I was craving and stopped simply because the three-page-minimum had been met. Really, none of it is coherent and my handwriting at the wee hours of the morning is hardly legible, but it means something to me. 

I think that to write all of that down is really to think about what you're thinking about. To think about what exists in your mind. Unfiltered and unstained by anything you've consumed from anywhere else, just purely what you're thinking about. 

I dont know if that makes sense to anyone but me, but it makes me think of how in my classes I do best in the ones I take notes in. Even if I'm just copying the board or fragments of it, or pieces of what the teacher is saying as fast as I can keep up. Sometimes I feel like my notes are ugly and what I am writing will be useless to me if I try to go over it later. But, later, I do feel like I retained the information from those lessons a lot better! And I think that journalling, for me at least, has the same effect. Sometimes things happen in my mind and of course I know they're there, but then the next thing comes and I never really spent time thinking about it so I forget it's there. But when I write things out it forces me to really look and examine them, I have to spell each letter of every word I write down, as I scribble the things in my brain.

I'm not sure if this journalling thing will last. I'm sure i'll skip a day or too and not always make time for it, but it's been a nice addition to my life, and I recommend it. I don't feel like I'm at a place right now where I understand myself. I just feel like I'm in the current and it's pulling me along and so maybe I'm a fish and I'm meant to be here because this is where all the other fish are, but maybe I'm a parrot and I fell asleep while flying and so I fell down and that's how I ended up here, and all I have to do is look around and see my pretty feathers and then remember i can fly. 

maybe none of this makes sense to anyone but me, but it sure is fun to write it out. 

write, my babies! 

see u soon. 

comment post ideas if u have anything u want me to touch on. lmk if this post annoyed you. 

spread ur wings. 

SPB