If you know me, I’m journaled for a very long time. I’ve religiously (but not entirely consistently) kept bullet journals for several years now—sometimes in an effort to organize my brain, sometimes because I’m bored, and sometimes because I need some place to talk to myself through the tedium of my job.
I haven’t been journaling in a while.
Some of that is laziness, some of it is burnout, and maybe—just maybe—some of that is depression. I feel more stable than I have been in a long while on my new meds, but that doesn’t mean the ups and downs, highs and lows of bipolar disorder go away. I forget about that sometimes. Sometimes I forget that maintenance is not the same as a fix, even though I wish fixes existed. It takes so much energy to maintain, and I find myself more tired than not these days.
Part of that is feeling so divorced from true, genuine connection. It’s strange; the world tries to insist that everything has returned to normal since the pandemic, but aside from the fact that COVID-19 is still very much a present issue, I feel a very distinct before and after has happened in my brain. The social effects and fallout from lockdowns and distancing are making themselves known to me in the strangest ways, the trickle-down of trauma, I suppose. It feels so much harder to find community and connection now than it used to, and writing is a fairly solitary job to begin with. It’s not that I lack a social life by any means, only that I feel isolated in ways that I either never noticed or never cared about before.
Some of that is also due to the changing nature of social media.
More and more I feel the pressure to perform online, to act as a brand, to present just enough of a self to be palatable, digestible, then ultimately forgettable. To be fair, this pressure doesn’t come from my publisher, but it does come from how little I feel compelled to engage with, well, anything online. Everything and everyone is online to be consumed, and I hate it. I don’t want to consume. I want to connect. I got my start online through Livejournal, and it felt as though I was speaking with friends, having true, genuine relationships. After all, some of my best friends were made online through my Livejournal days.
But now it feels as though I am talking to myself.
To be fair, I’m used to that. Back in high school, when I was eyeball-deep in every single AP course I could take, I used to cheerlead myself through studying by keeping a running commentary in my journal. I employ some version of this method in order to get me through the process of writing my novels. In hindsight, I’ve realized that a lot of this was probably masking my ADHD. But you know what? I’m not going to mess with what works for me. I don’t have a lot of processes…if any…but the ones I do have, I cherish.
So this year, I’ve decided to do NaNoWriMo again for GUARDIANS 3, and have also decided to conduct a bit of an experiment. I’m going to be lifting the curtain on my writing process (such as it is) and sharing with people the ramblings from my journal (spoilers redacted, of course). I intend to do this as a way to keep myself accountable, but also, I’m hoping that in the process of sharing my process, I won’t feel so alone.
If any of y’all are doing NaNoWriMo as well, please let me know!
I’m also doing NaNo this year! I’ve been having a hard time adjusting to life with covid, feeling disconnected and anxious. I’ll be here cheering you on!!