(2023-12-26) Brologue On The Journal As A Prosthesis

Brologue: On the Journal as a Prosthesis. Besides this blog and my Zettelkasten, I’ve been keeping a journal regularly for nearly two years.

I started journalling during the first COVID-19 lockdown. I was in a bad spot in a lot of areas – mainly Uni grades, Smash performance, and mental health – and I thought a journal as a physical creative outlet was something I was missing

I can’t quite explain what changed in 2022-23 compared to 2020-21, but I stopped treating writing in my journal everyday as some aspirational, instrumental goal

What had been a spotty practice before became an everyday thing. I just wrote, indiscriminately. Journals are places where we might make notes or plan for future intentions, but they’re not magic artefacts that can direct destiny and yank your one desired future out of infinitely many outcomes. I’ve read in places that journalling is maintaining a relationship with yourself. If so, that means nothing’s off the table.

an ADHDer is overcommitting constantly (commitment)

For me, journaling as a means to garner success by committing to things in writing was not it.

Humans beings are, contrary to what we might expect, terrible for remembering. For ADHDers like me, it’s even worse – and I know for a fact I’m not the only one who can’t see more than three days into the future.

It’s only through the regular logging and reviewing of our lives – in a blog, Zettelkasten, journal, whatever – that the fuzzy jigsaw puzzle begins to piece together. (Tell Your Life Story Through Various Filters)

without the journal, I’d spend much more of my days going through the motions, letting go of myself to be battered by debris in the slipstream

It’s much more empowering to treat my journal as a prosthesis. (cyborg)

Take the journal away, and I can’t navigate the world nearly as well. The same would be true of wheelchair users if they woke up tomorrow to find that some Grinch had pinched all the access ramps in the world overnight.

When I say the journal is my prosthesis, that’s a statement that’s come from within, not one that has been produced through external forces telling me how I should live. It is exercising my right to self-determination. It’s not something I do because I’m on that #GRINDSET. I need it like Winston needs his dummy leg or else he’ll fall over.