Excerpts From The Morning Pages, 2024/01/31

I started writing the morning pages today.

Julia Cameron describes Morning Pages as

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages – they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind – and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize, and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page… and then do three more pages tomorrow.

Below is an excerpt from it. Although I didn’t start writing it for the blog, I think putting it here is of value to me.

…
Writing all this down here feels like I have so much noise in my head and could finally dump it down. But this is also not that simple because that noise continues to live, and it’s not like I am working on all of them. They are just there - like the low AC mains hum in those old speakers, like the bitterness of the coffee, underneath which are taste notes hiding. After a while, you tend to neglect those noises and just focus on a few things. But, God, is that background static noise difficult, and it can sometimes become unbearable? I mean, I don’t mind the bitterness of the coffee. Maybe that is a wrong metaphor - I love coffee.

Living inside your own head is bad - especially for someone like me who cannot explain the emotions to a second person. It becomes difficult to articulate. I have been trying not to live inside my own head. Only times this happens nowadays is when I take my camera out on the streets. I feel like I am not me anymore. My mind is in search of a frame, a moment that I can capture, both on the technical aspects of the camera and the emotional state of the street. The moment I trip the shutter, I feel something - a moment of satisfaction. It does not matter at that moment how the image came out - I won’t know that until maybe days or weeks later when I process the film, and then maybe I’ll feel a bit of disappointment - but at that moment on the street? That feels like a serene nothingness.

Sometimes I feel like I am using these hobbies,like making and building things, coffee, and now photography as an escape instead of facing my problems. Like I am holding on to these “obsessions” dearly because everything else feels fleeting. Nowadays, more than ever, I feel like I cannot hold on to life. And this “obsession” feels like a straw that I am grasping.

My rational brain, on the other hand, is skeptical. It constantly tells me that what I am doing is a waste of time.

In the middle of taking a photo on the street, making my coffee, writing on the blog, designing something, or in the middle of my weekly ritual of developing negatives, I find myself suddenly feeling guilty, anxious, or even angry. Why am I not working on making myself better? What is the point of doing all this? This won’t put food on my plate; on the contrary, it costs me money. Why am I spending so much time on these activities?

What is the purpose of all of this? It’s not as if this is adding anything to the world or myself. It’s not like I’m engaged in some useful or great engineering or “art.”

But I don’t know how else to live. I don’t know if it’s my ADHD, but if I’m not obsessing over something, I don’t feel alive. I feel like I won’t be able to make it without anything else to hold on to.

When I talk about obsession, my brain taunts me. “Who do you think you are? Obsession, it seems. As if it would amount to anything. As if you have enough grit to see things through. That is not obsession - this is just you being a child, chasing one shiny thing after another.”

I feel there is a need for a conclusion here, but I don’t have one.