Negative capability
Capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason
🗣️ Listen to the audio version of this newsletter below.
negative capability, noun. capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason
One of my intentions for 2023 is to journal more. I already have a fairly robust journaling practice, mostly because it was the coping method I adopted to deal with my scattered mind before I was diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve been journaling since I was seven years old, when I filled those incredibly wide-ruled pages with drawings that became stories that became imperfect records of the emotions in which I wanted to linger. In middle school, the year I was given a desktop computer (without internet access, of course; back then, the only way we could get online was through the phone line), I started chronicling a lightly editorialized version of my life in Word Perfect, complete with dialogue, as I could type much faster than I could write by hand.
But there is something about writing by hand that has never lost its charm — nor its power — for me. While typing might be able to keep up with the speed of my thoughts, there is something about deliberateness of writing by hand that forces me to slow down, to actually examine my thoughts as I commit them to paper. A few days ago, I wrote about not knowing my guiding philosophy, yet once I sat down to journal about it by hand, I came to the understanding that I do have a guiding philosophy, I just hadn’t verbalized it yet.
It is to cultivate joy.
I think about joy a lot; in fact, it’s a theme that has consistently risen to the top in all my journaling of the past three years. When I was burnt out, when I was suffering from a psychotic break, when I was dealing with the worst writer’s block of my life, all I wanted was the smallest dose of joy to alleviate my pain. I chased pleasure then, thinking it was the same thing as joy. A steam-filled bathroom and tub overflowing with rosy-scented bubbles. Long walks through cemeteries with a good friend and her dog. Reading webtoons on the couch with Korean food delivery on the way. A cup of coffee on my deck first thing in the morning. I focused on the small pleasures as a way of not confronting the abyss, like enjoying the view during a long walk off a cliff.
And pleasure did help. I found moments of happiness in the depths of despair, but happiness melts away once the thing that brings you pleasure has been enjoyed.
I needed something else to sustain me, but I didn’t know what. It wasn’t until I sat down one day and forced myself to slow down, to think deliberately, that I discovered the answer.
I needed joy.
I frequently joke about being an Aries moon/Grand Fire Trine/Type 7 pain-avoidant type, but the truth is I am bad at discomfort, especially mental discomfort. Boredom. I hate feeling bored more than anything in the world. And it’s so easy to avoid boredom these days — social media is merely a phone pickup away.
But the truth is, boredom is necessary for creativity. On the days I put my phone in another room, when I cut myself off from the internet, when I have nothing but pen, paper, and my thoughts before me, I start to find joy. I start to chase the flights of fancy, to dig deeper into my imagination, to think.
It takes work. And I hate work, as I’ve mentioned before. Work is uncomfortable, and you know me. But the thing about joy is that I want to continue pursuing it, even though I don’t like work. Writing a joy, even though I hate it just as much as I love it sometimes. My dogs, Castor and Pollux, are joys, even though they are so much work. It was through journaling that I discovered joy contains so much more than mere pleasure — it encompasses hatred and stress and frustration as well as immense satisfaction and fulfillment. If I could hold those two thoughts together without needing to resolve the contradiction, if I could achieve negative capability, then I could gain greater clarity about my creative life.
Pleasures are consumed, joy is cultivated.
And isn’t that a beautiful thing?
Going forward, I will be sharing some of the prompts and questions that arise during my journaling practice if y’all want to join me on this journey toward cultivating joy. I will be emailing them every Sunday to my 절친, although for the month of January, I will be emailing them to all my subscribers, as this time of year is when we tend to reflect on our past selves and contemplate our goals for the coming year. In February, they will be going behind a paywall, but I am running a promotion on paid subscriptions through January 15 if you’re interested.
Happy journaling!
부탁해줘봐,
I also love cultivating joy, though I have realized that I have been perhaps too focused on SPREADING joy, throwing my joy at other people, rather than cultivating it for myself. And spreading joy is lovely! As long as I'm not sacrificing my own joy cultivation.
I also love writing long hand. It is spectacularly inefficient for writing writing (like, not journaling but writing stories) but this year I am embracing that inefficiency and committing to going the long way around to getting the words down. And yes, committing to the boredom.
(This was a long-winded way of saying that this all resonated for me!)