I want: to publish.
I most naturally: dash writings off, to feel on the flutters of freedom, like dancing in the wind
2024/03/07
Dear Self,
Long awaited! This medium of Letters to Myself feel most natural, but I've written so few!
A few times on FutureMe (website where ppl can schedule-send an email years in the future). A few exchanges with my future self. Even some romantic letters after college (epistolary is the word!) — and none of them published yet (on this Substack at least... 😉 )!
Fear of publishing. Uncertainty about what it is to express myself. A travesty, a crime against creativity!
YET! this Substack's very nature is of Experimental Writing! So here it is~~~
So what inspired this?
I'm part of this writing community called Foster, and today on a group call, I met
who shared her recent post!Her process? She keeps a journal — over a month, she tracked insights and breakthroughs. Takes these threads, two-line pointers of epiphanies — and 28 lines later, combines them into a brilliant essay!
Before that? For five years, she'd been writing letters! Sometimes multiple times a day!
So I reflected — yes, write letters to myself!
Freeform, I can express how I (and how I wish to) talk myself! Without the constraints of having formality or explaining context — a purest form of writing for myself, that of writing to myself!!
I see this developing as a nightly practice!
Yes, a recap of what went on the day. And also something deeper! Questioning, from curiosity, from wonder, from gratitude, each thing I encountered. For in each present moment where I have small delights, it's for those good vibes to be more pervasive in life.
"This too shall pass." But the spotlight of cognition, borrowing from positive psychology, shines most fulfillingly on life's qualities thus: viewing and holding as the pervasive good, the transient bad! Gratitude and awe and joy as fundamental (background, subconscious <> foreground, top of mind) — or as Tony Robbins puts it, emotional homes!
For what I seek at the end of each day is integration!
Satisfaction for the night, integration for the rest of my life!
Best,
CoderCorgi