16 min
My Journaling Journey - EP0005 Journey from Meh
-
- Mental Health
Read the full episode here https://journeyfrommeh.com/my-journaling-journey/
Is it just me or does your body sometimes arrive at your destination before your mind does? You know, you’re at the beach, but your mind is running through checklists...did I pack everything, did I answer my emails, did I switch the stove off?
I’ve noticed this often happens to me. Most often when I fly somewhere. Less so when I do a road trip. Apparently on road trips my brain and body travel at the same speed. ;-)
This happened the first time I flew to Paris. There I was, green, nineteen and in Paris!
Getting on that plane was one of the best decisions of my life and I followed it up with another great decision soon afterwards.
I had been so focused on getting there - working and saving - that I wasn’t really sure what to do once I got there. To my dad’s horror, on his enquiry (days before I left my home town) “what is your itinerary?” I responded, “I arrive in Paris at noon”. That was as far as I had thought!
I needed to transition from my work all the time mentality. My body was in Paris but my mind was still in work mode and my heart was stuck on all the farewells that preceded my flight.
Ideally, it would have been great to talk to a friend, but I was travelling alone, didn’t know anybody and had just enough French to order a meal - the same one, over and over again.
The conversations I wanted to have with someone were floating around in my head. Impulsively, I spent some of my hard-earned savings on a small notebook. Talking to yourself isn’t socially acceptable but writing to yourself is!
The thoughts flying around my head landed on those pages. They were quickly followed by what I was seeing, who I was meeting, a million new experiences, my feelings, what I was learning and what I was trying to figure out.
There was so much I was experiencing and seeing on a daily basis that it was hard to keep up with my need to write.
When you’re backpacking like I was, time can feel elastic. I would spend a day sightseeing with someone that I just met that morning, and yet it felt like we shared a lifetime together.
It was as if the volume had been turned up on life! My pen skated across pages trying to record every moment, feeling, sight.
I get my love of writing from my mother. She was a great letter writer.
Envelopes would arrive stuffed, straining at their glue seams to contain the pages, photos and newspaper clippings. Receiving a letter from her was like receiving a deconstructed scrapbook.
The envelope was often an example of written crown shyness where she would leave just a small channel-like gap between the address and everything else she had to say on the envelope. “Love you”, “miss you”, “write soon” stickers and other decorations colouring the envelope like a wordy decorative creeper.
The pages were crammed full of words - two sentences to each line. Borders were ignored - she used all the space fully.
One of my mother’s pet hates was when people didn’t butter toast right to the edge. She thought it was miserly. “Don’t you have enough butter to include the edges?”
She took that same approach when writing on a page - she had enough words to cover the margins, borders and every bit of available blank space.
Read the full episode here https://journeyfrommeh.com/my-journaling-journey/
Is it just me or does your body sometimes arrive at your destination before your mind does? You know, you’re at the beach, but your mind is running through checklists...did I pack everything, did I answer my emails, did I switch the stove off?
I’ve noticed this often happens to me. Most often when I fly somewhere. Less so when I do a road trip. Apparently on road trips my brain and body travel at the same speed. ;-)
This happened the first time I flew to Paris. There I was, green, nineteen and in Paris!
Getting on that plane was one of the best decisions of my life and I followed it up with another great decision soon afterwards.
I had been so focused on getting there - working and saving - that I wasn’t really sure what to do once I got there. To my dad’s horror, on his enquiry (days before I left my home town) “what is your itinerary?” I responded, “I arrive in Paris at noon”. That was as far as I had thought!
I needed to transition from my work all the time mentality. My body was in Paris but my mind was still in work mode and my heart was stuck on all the farewells that preceded my flight.
Ideally, it would have been great to talk to a friend, but I was travelling alone, didn’t know anybody and had just enough French to order a meal - the same one, over and over again.
The conversations I wanted to have with someone were floating around in my head. Impulsively, I spent some of my hard-earned savings on a small notebook. Talking to yourself isn’t socially acceptable but writing to yourself is!
The thoughts flying around my head landed on those pages. They were quickly followed by what I was seeing, who I was meeting, a million new experiences, my feelings, what I was learning and what I was trying to figure out.
There was so much I was experiencing and seeing on a daily basis that it was hard to keep up with my need to write.
When you’re backpacking like I was, time can feel elastic. I would spend a day sightseeing with someone that I just met that morning, and yet it felt like we shared a lifetime together.
It was as if the volume had been turned up on life! My pen skated across pages trying to record every moment, feeling, sight.
I get my love of writing from my mother. She was a great letter writer.
Envelopes would arrive stuffed, straining at their glue seams to contain the pages, photos and newspaper clippings. Receiving a letter from her was like receiving a deconstructed scrapbook.
The envelope was often an example of written crown shyness where she would leave just a small channel-like gap between the address and everything else she had to say on the envelope. “Love you”, “miss you”, “write soon” stickers and other decorations colouring the envelope like a wordy decorative creeper.
The pages were crammed full of words - two sentences to each line. Borders were ignored - she used all the space fully.
One of my mother’s pet hates was when people didn’t butter toast right to the edge. She thought it was miserly. “Don’t you have enough butter to include the edges?”
She took that same approach when writing on a page - she had enough words to cover the margins, borders and every bit of available blank space.
16 min