Doing things the hard way.

I have this bad habit. When I get to choose between two possible ways to do something, I almost always choose the hard way. I suppose I am just foolish like that. Or stubborn, I don't know. Here I am trying to make sense of the chaos in my head. I looked at things and said to myself, "Ok, I don't have a therapist. Why don't I just journal ALL THE THINGS until it makes sense?"

And of course I am doing this by hand. Because it's the hard way. Because I'm more familiar with journal writing in a notebook than typing it up. So, I am sitting here with a blister on my thumb and writer's cramp from spending all morning journal writing. I have learned a few valuable things in this process.

1. When I am stressed out I hold my writing implement really tightly. (Hence the blister on my thumb.)

2. When I am stressed out, I tend to break pencil leads. I may be switching to mechanical pencils for this journal work.

3. I can write just shy of 2k words by hand in about 2 hours. I guess if I really focused, I actually could write a novel by hand in a month. It may not be completely legible to anybody else, but I can get the word vomit part done.

4. I have no idea what in hell I'm doing despite having done the therapy thing off and on for most of my adult life. I just feel like I'm on a hamster wheel writing the same stuff over and over again. Which is, amusingly, how the therapy sessions felt most of the time too.

5. You can find tons of journal prompts on line for self-help. Not all of them make sense with out the prompt that comes before it. PRO TIP: Use the prompts in order from the list they're posted in, not at random.