journaling
For the first time in my adult life I am keeping a journal -- but, like, actually keeping it. Over the years there have been many starts and stops, but I think I've finally found a way to do the thing that doesn't end up petering out. (Or so I hope.)
For a while I toyed with the idea of keeping the journal as a blog and allowing others to be privy to the things I was thinking about and working on. I decided against it for reasons including but not limited to that audiences impact the product. I figured that eventually I would start writing my entries in a way that would entertain or impress the reader and not in a way that would honour how I was feeling and what I was thinking -- a pattern I am trying to break.
I don't know why we decided 20 years ago that everyone needed to know all our innermost thoughts and feelings, but we did. And look at the world now.
PS:
In Easy A, Thomas Haden Church's character says, "I don't know what your generation's fascination is with documenting your every thought but I can assure you, they're not all diamonds."
I was 32 (32!) and when I saw that and I remember thinking something like, "it's not about documenting your best thoughts but rather about documenting your life in order to connect with other people through the banal and the mundane and not just the exceptional."
I really drank the Kool-Aid, huh.
PPS:
I got a major deja vu chill when I wrote the second of the three PS paragraphs.