Morning Pages
Morning pages. Julie Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” suggests dumping your mind chatter into a few pages each day first thing. Journaling as an artist has always been more of a creative dumping for me: an idea here, a drawing there, concepts, inspirations, and extrapolations of things I read or hear daily. Morning pages are an opportunity to release the junk and dump the unnecessary thoughts. It is not a “Dear Diary” or recounting of the previous day’s activities or thoughts, although it can spiral into a dumping of something that did happen or affect you in some way. It has been a daily practice for about six months now. I think I can genuinely say it is now a daily habit and has been incredibly valuable in processing emotions and working through problems, whether personal or creative.
Through journaling, I have come to realize that change in habits and thoughts happens only with reflection. Sometimes, the inspiration to make a change can happen in an instant while thinking in the shower or taking a walk, but it was the process of reflecting on that thing that led to the ah-ha moment.
reflect. write. think.