All hail the writer’s A4 therapist, the morning exercise of three pages of longhand stream of consciousness writing. I completed The Artist’s Way in either the first or second week of September 2021. I started my 12 week journey in the June of that year. I was in a huge degree of emotional pain, utterly lost in life and world that had changed before my eyes both personally and globally, I was also VERY blocked. As long as whatever I was willing to try looked somewhat healthy there wasn’t much that I wouldn’t have tried. The Artist’s Way was a strong choice, I’m glad that I did it. Although it was challenging it also brought me a lot of joy. It needn’t be only for those on the artistic path, it’s a good decluttering for all walks of life.
I’ve not long finished re-reading my first journal post-completion from September ’21 until October ’21. I’ve decided to start shredding my morning pages that coming up to their third anniversary. Wouldn’t you know that back in June a free paper shredder was being given away near where I live? It’s found a good new life here with me. Those roughly eight weeks of pages hold a hell of a lot of pain. I decided that rather than removing them from the drawer underneath my bed and putting them into the recycling that I would give them a better send off. It felt right to let the shredder cut into the heart of the pain and release the words from their paper bound prison. From there my boyfriend found a simple DIY hack to turn them into firelighters for the wood burner this winter. It feels right to turn those pages into ashes so that they alchemise the anguish in flames and rise again stronger at another time. It feels like a cremation of where I was at.
I don’t have a photo of the wood burner where I live in action that’s nice and it’s not really the time of year to light it and take a photo so here’s a stock image for you to enjoy. It’s nearly October so keep an eye on my notes.
A lot, no, nearly all, actually all in their own way, of my 2021 pages were about how lost I felt. How low my self-esteem and confidence were after having my life broken apart and then wondering if it was even worth picking up the pieces and if I didn’t pick up the pieces then how exactly was I to go about making something new? It read about the anger that I had bubbling away underneath the surface that I had just come into contact with and how much it scared me. Those pages spoke of profound loneliness and being afraid in a world I felt like I had no place being in. I wrote about how I was beginning to struggle financially and resented the notion of the desk job ‘drag them back into the office’ chant that was going around. The years of untold pain and hatred that I started to feel were poured onto those pages with an intensity that I never knew I had in me. I was always tired, sleep was hard to come by, prices were (and still are) going up but not wages, I was living on my own in an area that I didn’t know well and I hardly knew anyone, I was struggling to balance work and life, feeling trapped in a job I hated, watching my life continue to fall apart when that wasn’t what I wanted. I was made to face some very difficult and traumatic truths. There was triumph, but there was so much agony in that triumph, so much heartbreak and pain, there was no sweetness to be had in victory at that point. I’m now working through my November to December pages, and it all gets worse.
There’s something beautiful about re-reading those pages and shredding them. I was writing in a different colour pen each day to keep things fun even though life felt anything but fun. When I present the pages to the shredder and watch them be devoured I can feel the pain from me back then dissipating, not completely which is why I will turn them into firelighters, but enough to set something free. The energy signature I feel is relief, a feeling of freedom. The me from back then can scatter her energy into the ether and become something new. I suppose it’s like when a person dies. Yes, there’s a body, but at that moment you know that the body was not the person, flesh and bone was just an outfit.
When I compare my morning pages from them to the ones that I write now the growth as a person has been off the chart. I’m an entirely different woman. The way that I view life now couldn’t be more different. The way that I view myself couldn’t be more different either. Morning pages broke a lot of curses for me and set a lot of demons free. There’s been scores of ghosts find their way back to the light and I feel lighter for it. The pages have become a noticeboard for how to care for myself and how to prioritise my life, and for goodness sake, how to prioritise myself. From the morning pages I’ve learned what is important and what isn’t even worth a passing glance. I’ve learned how to be honest with myself. It was difficult to even be honest with myself, but with compassionate nature of the pages I managed it bit by bit, after all they’re my pages and no one else had to see them. I believe that some of the things that I’ve wrote over the course of three years could resurrect the dead or at least make my ancestors turn in their graves, but that’s none of their business!
I think when you’re as cynical as I can be sometimes, when you feel so jaded about life, you don’t trust that you can make anything happen. From re-reading my pages I’ve made some of my dreams come true without even realising it at the time. I so desperately wanted someone to love me and tell me that everything would be ok, my boyfriend appeared. I hated my job, and I wanted out, I had a crossing of words with HR which prompted me to give my notice in, I jumped ship for my sanity’s sake. I didn’t see it at the time how that situation had been brought about to give me a definite reason to leave. I was worried about how I would live, life continually brings me the goods despite ‘not working’. I wanted friends who would walk either the spiritual or artistic paths with me (read, rare folk) and oh my god it happened. I wanted to deepen my writing practice so an advert for Beth Kempton’s summer writing sanctuary in 2022 appeared on my Instagram feed, I had no idea who Beth Kempton was at the time. I wanted the perfect gift to remember my great-grandmother with, a pink paisley Fender Telecaster appeared for well below the asking price. I wanted a house with a garden somewhere quiet, guess where I live..? I feel that I owe all of this to my morning pages.
Lots of morning pages all shredded and ready to be made into firelighters.
I don’t live a problem free life, life doesn’t work that way, but in doing morning pages I feel like I have a tool to help me work through life’s problems and to understand myself. Morning pages have taught me how to forgive myself, my lack of sainthood was mostly caused by lack of wisdom more than it ever was deliberate. I’ve learned how to show myself kindness. Julia Cameron also has a book called the Vein of Gold. There’s a brilliant exercise in there called ‘cups’ that I occasionally use that has been a brilliant help for me too. If you’ve got a crippling sense of shame about some past misstep, an unfortunate situation, etc, cups is a fantastic deep dive into it. It’s kind of like morning pages for a particular topic, but on steroids. I regret not finishing the Vein of Gold, but my life simply didn’t permit it at the time.
Maybe one day I’ll do a post about my morning pages from 2022. In many ways that was a far worse year than 2021. I’m glad I kept going with morning pages after I finished The Artist’s Way. They’ve basically informed my life and life decisions since then without much thought being given to it. I would implore anyone who is doing morning pages to keep at it. I would encourage anyone who has stopped to pick it up again. I would insist that those with an inconsistent practice find the discipline to do it every day. Morning pages are no fluke, it’s benefits can’t be made up. I question everything, pick it all apart and go through it with a fine-tooth comb, I can’t find fault in morning pages.
Before I end this I want to say a few more things. Time isn’t linear, in fact it’s a construct. Because of that if 2021 me has any way of seeing this I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You made a brave decision to do The Artist’s Way and truly dedicate yourself to it. Because of your decision I am where I am right now. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel really lost, but a lot of the rough stuff is gone. Life was crap and it stayed that way for a while which made it look like there was no end in sight, but I can now tell you that I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I still haven’t got a clue where I’m going, but at least I can move with it a bit easier now. That was because of a decision that you made in June 2021. Thank you so much.
Thank you for reading this. Do you do morning pages? Have you got a stash of them hidden away somewhere that you want no one to ever see?! What do you do with them? What have they done for you? Please leave a comment below!
Some of the firelighters that I made. All you need is an eggbox, shredded paper and some melted wax.