Fri 24 May, 6:30 pm
I've been thinking more today about why I keep coming back to making blogs and such in the first place, even if I have the tendency to abandon them after just a few posts.
I've been trying to find ways to integrate journalling into my life- I know, you've heard this a million times before from a thousand people. If you're anything like me, 'Journalling changed my life!' is something you hear so often it's lost meaning. But I've been trying to find out what people do actually mean by that, and what actual function journaling has for different people.
I was surprised to realise that I already do practice journaling, just not in the stereotypical 'here's what I did today' format. I love to make lists to organise everything I have happening in my life, it's a good habit I picked up from my mum, and once every couple months I tend to make a huge list of all the tasks I'm juggling at the moment. I also make little to-do lists to help me manage my executive dysfunction for that day. And this of course, is a form of journaling. But I had never thought of it like that.
It was this video from struthless that helped me figure out which methods of journalling are helpful for me on a weekly or even daily basis, which ones I only need to rely on in specific situations, and which ones are habits I can try (or chose not to) build. This really practical breakdown of what journalling looks like was a complete game changer to me. Subcategorising different methods of journalling into a set of skills made it seem much more approachable.
Anyway, back to blogs. I think the way I keep writing blogs is somewhere between journaling and essay writing. But I'm still today even developing the skills I need to be able to maintain either of those as a long term project- journaling because I'm still figuring out what does and doesn't work for me, and essay writing because I keep setting the scope of my writing far too large and lose focus of what I'm trying to say. It's no wonder I keep abandoning these things.
So, I guess, if I'm going to maintain this iteration of blogging beyond the first handful of posts, it needs to serve a function. I'm still not sure what I want that function to be, but I can think of a few ways this website can be useful to me, and feel like it's valuable on a day to day basis. I think already I've got a good thing going having different sections of this site for documenting my past work, for casual day-to-day posting (like this) and for larger projects I care about (the manifesto-to-be).
I'm not sure I'll maintain all of these, but at very least I think this site is a good place to archive all of my work, and I'm hoping that if nothing else, I'll continue to maintain it for that. As for this blogging? I have a million disorganised ideas I'd like to post about, but never do because they feel too disoriented. My list of resources is a good example of this. I think I'd like to de-compile each of those links into their own little post, because I have at least a few words to say about every entry on that page, and I'm sure I'll add more to it over time. That might be a place to start. Or maybe I'll just talk about music. I have a lot of thoughts about my favourite songs, and I'm going to a concert tomorrow! Only time will tell what I do. Your guess is good as mine at this point.