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#theres usually only two in the mornings but sometimes they arent awake i need to know if i should atart walking or not
mentalmimosa · 5 years
Text
long night in the castle of lions
Sometimes, the nights in the castle are long. Long and filled with a sort of infinite quiet, the sound of universe at rest that presses in from all sides. No noise from inside the ship can compete with it, that silence, not Lance’s snores or the singsong Hunk uses to talk himself into sleep: It’s ok. It’s all right. Everything is gonna be fine.
It isn’t. Keith’s pretty sure of that. Lions or legendary whatever notwithstanding, it feels like they’re pretty much screwed.
Galactic evil? Weapons that can blow away worlds? What kind of chance do they have against any of that?
Not good. Not fucking good.
He can hide those thoughts during the day, when they’re out and about saving the innocent and protecting what’s good, what seems right. But at night, when he has only the shadows and his own head for company, those thoughts drown him out, pull him knee deep into despair.
He doesn’t sleep much in the castle. He envies everybody who can: Pidge, who can curl into any corner and be asleep in ten ticks. Allura and Coran, who slept here for 10,000 years, for gods’ sake. And Shiro, their great and glorious leader, who strolls into the lounge for breakfast every morning looking like he’s just had a strong, solid eight.
“Good morning,” he’ll say to each of them, a smile and a pat on the shoulder for each. “How’d you sleep?”
Keith doesn’t bother to lie anymore, to put on an act of at ease and well-rested.
“Like shit, Shiro,” he’ll say, not bothering to raise his head from the purple stuff that passes for coffee. “Like absolute shit.”
The first time he’d said it, Shiro had startled, his hold on Keith’s shoulder going sudden and tight.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Didn’t get a wink.”
“Well,” Shiro had stumbled, “you, ah--did you try meditation?”
“Didn’t bother.” He’d looked up, looked back to see Shiro’s face drawn up and worried. “I never sleep a lot anyway. Even on Earth. I’m fine.”
Shiro hadn’t bought it then, didn’t buy it now, but Keith’s stuck to it, this little shade of untruth. No, he’s never taken refuge in sleep like some people but he’s never found it so elusive before, so willing to slip out of his grasp. After a while, he even finds himself missing his nightmares: the ones about crashing, the ones about falling, the ones about his mom’s voice. They feel like old friends, those dreams, that he’s no longer allowed to see.
And he’s tired. Dear gods, he’s exhausted. But even the softest Altean pillow and the pressure of darkness can’t kick him over to sleep, not the kind he needs, the kind that lets him sink into the bed and lasts for more than 20 minutes. That sort of sleep, it feels like, is long fucking gone.
*****
One night, or what passes for it in space, there’s a knock on his door.
That’s how he knows it isn’t Coran or Allura; they’d have gone straight for the chime. It’s not Hunk, either, because he favors shave and a haircut , and it’s not Lance because he’s a dick and would’ve pounded with both fists. And shouted. He’d definitely have shouted.
Pidge or Shiro, then.
And unless Pidge’s shot up a foot in the last few hours, the tapping is too tall for him. So.
“It’s alright, Shiro,” he calls, waving on the small bunkside lamp. “You can come in.”
The door slides open and Shiro steps in, frowning. “How’d you know it was me?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Right.”
It takes Keith a second to realize that Shiro looks weird. Well, not weird, but a lot less formal than usual; less like a Garrison Leader and more like a person. A person who’s wearing--
“Are those pajamas ?”
Shiro looks down at himself, looks back up at Keith, bemused. “To the best of my knowledge, yes. They’re not a matched set, but since it’s what I tend to sleep in, I think calling them pajamas is fair.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“I mean, if anyone’s attire is cause for comment, I think it’s yours. Aren’t those the clothes you wore today? And yesterday? And the day before that?”
“I put them through the ‘fresher every morning,” Keith says, defensive. “It’s not like I’m wandering around unwashed or something.”
“No, it’s”--Shiro holds his hands up, a little sign of surrender--“I wasn’t suggesting you were. Do you...is this what you wear every night?”
Keith bristles. “Yes. So?”
“So, maybe you’d have an easier time sleeping if you, you know, let yourself relax.”
“I am relaxed!”
Shiro’s mouth curves. “Yeah, obviously. Look at you. You’re the picture of rest and relaxation, Keith.”
Gods, what is it with this guy? “What are you doing here?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Ugh.” Keith folds his arms across his chest, summons his best scowl. “You don’t need to be.”
“You haven’t slept in weeks. And that’s according to you. You don’t see a cause for concern?”
“I told you. I’m fine.”
Shiro steps towards the bunk, the lamp catching his face, the dark light of his eyes. “And I’m here as your friend to tell you you’re not. What happened with you and the Green Lion today?”
There’s a rush of heat in his face. “We--I lost track of it for a minute, that’s all.”
“And nearly crashed into its side. You could’ve been hurt. So could Pidge, along with both of your lions.”
“But I didn’t. Everything turned out fine. We got home in one piece, didn’t we?”
Shiro’s voice is terribly gentle. “Keith.”
“What?”
“That was just today. Last week, you almost went headfirst into that asteroid. And right before that, you--”
“Gods, shut up!” Keith says. There are tears in his eyes, tears, in front of freaking Shiro. It’s fucking horrific. “You don’t have to--I know I’ve screwed up, ok? I know each and every time I’ve made a mistake.”
“Keith--”
“I know I’m a fuck-up, alright? I know that, I know, you don’t have to come in here in the middle of the fucking night to remind me!”
“Hey,” Shiro says, a shot of steel in his voice, “no way. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Really? Really? Right. Sure, Shiro.”
“Damn it, don’t--!”
He shoves the tears from his cheeks and flies up, ready to punch Shiro if he has to, shove him out into the corridor, anything to make him go away. “Stop talking!” he barks. “Just shut up and get out of here!”
“No!” Shiro shouts, getting right in his face. “I’ve tried not talking to you about this, and you know what, that didn’t work! You’re still dead on your feet all the time, you still look sick, you still feel like you’re worthless and you think that you’re holding us back but you’re not, Keith! You’re not!”
Keith bares his teeth, balls his fists. “How the fuck do you know how I feel, huh?”
“How do I--?” Shiro looks furious. “What part of there are no secrets between paladins did you not understand?”
“What?”
“The mind-link,” Shiro says through gritted teeth. “When we’re Voltron. Do you not grok how it works?”
Keith snarls, tries to take a step back, but Shiro has him by the elbows like a vise. “You’ve been digging around in my head, then? That’s great. That’s real fucking leader-ly of you.”
“I’m not--I’m not digging around in your head! You’re broadcasting those feelings like they’re on a freaking repeater!”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are.” Shiro’s eyes are angry, his grip unrelenting. “Gods, don’t you see? The more tired you get, the louder your thoughts are. Your brain doesn’t have the energy to hold them back.”
There’s a sink of fear in Keith’s gut. He’s afraid it shows in his face; raises his voice just in case. “Well,” he spits, “that doesn’t mean you have to listen!”
“You’re impossible!” Shiro says through clentched teeth. “Honestly, gods, Keith, you’re the most--!”
There are a lot of things that rattle around in Keith’s head on those long nights in the Castle of Lions. Some nights, he can’t crawl out of sadness, can’t shake himself free of worry and doubt. Some nights, there’s fear: the shriek of Zarkon’s fighters; the screams of dying planets; the way the Red Lion trembles when he’s wounded.
But on some nights, when the silence is at its most still, Keith thinks about Shiro. Not the man who strides about with so much certainty, the man who never loses his cool, the man whose resolution, whose steadiness has held their shaky team together time and strange time again.
No, he thinks about the man he’d seen on the table on Earth, the man whose shackles he’d broken, the man who he’d half-carried, half-dragged into the open air, to the speeder, to safety. He remembers the weight of Shiro’s head on his shoulder and the stutter of his breath, the way he’d clung to Keith without reservation or shame, the soft grateful sounds he’d made against Keith’s neck as they staggered towards safety and away from chains and from fear:
Thank you, he’d murmured, his voice like a bruise. Whoever you are. Thank you.
And those thoughts slip sometimes into a dream, an imagined hour in his bed with Shiro bent over him, kissing him, petting at his skin until he cries out and making those same grateful sounds as he pushes into Keith’s body, fills him until there’s no room for thinking, no room for worry, no worry for something like doubt.
Keith, this dream-Shiro will murmur, his voice like a bruise. Thank you. Thank you.
On those longest of nights, the sweetest, he’ll take himself in hand and forget to muffle his cries. He’ll imagine the shape of Shiro’s mouth, the taste of its weight upon his, and stroke himself as Shiro would, slow and steady, each touch perfect and measured until it’s not, until they can’t be, until they’re fucking in earnest and all words are gone and there is, in the whole goddamn universe, only the two of them left, spend supernovas panting against each other’s hot skin.
And then, with the dream pulled about him, he’ll sleep, fall into a soft solid hour of respite but then awake feeling guilty, so fucking guilty, his flesh crawling in shame, and his eyes never close again after that.
Has he put that out into the mind-link? Those feelings, that momentary delusion. Does Shiro know about all of that, too?
“Fuck,” he says, frantic, twisting in Shiro’s arms, “do you ever shut up?”
“I don’t know. Do you ever listen?”
His heart is on fire, his whole body filled with panic. “Huh,” he spits, “maybe if you said something worth hearing.”
Shiro opens his mouth--to scold, to fuss, to shout, maybe all of the above--but in the same instant, their bodies collide, Keith’s thrashing crashing their hips together in a sweet sudden collision and oh, Keith thinks wild, disbelieving, oh gods, because Shiro is hard, stiff behind the soft turn of his sleep pants and he’s breathing startled into Keith’s face and not running away and this is a terrible idea, this isn’t even a thought, this is the best thing that Keith’s done all day:
He turns his face and jams his mouth against Shiro’s, less a kiss than a battering ram. It’s awkward and sideways and rushed and yet it makes Shiro moan, makes his hands fly up to cup Keith’s face and steady him, steady them, turn the awkward into something perfect and deep.
He tastes like Altean toothpaste, does Shiro, a dark, bitter berry. His tongue is demanding and his body unyielding and his fingers are cold, metal and skin both, and with all this, with just a kiss, he makes Keith see fucking stars.
“I didn’t come here for this,” Shiro whispers when they part, when their lips drift just enough to let words fly. “I mean, I’d be lying if I said I’d never thought about, um...but honestly, I came to see if you were all right.”
Keith slips his hand under the hem of Shiro’s t-shirt, lays his palm over cool, shivering skin. “Mmm, I know. But does that mean you want to stop?”
Shiro makes a tiny, pained sound, his cock twitching against Keith’s hip. “Stop? No. No no. Unless you--unless you want to.”
“No,” Keith says, biting gently at Shiro’s lip, his own curled up in a smile. “Definitely not.”
*****
In the morning, he’s slumped over his weird not-coffee when he feels a hand on his shoulder, a roughened voice saying: “Keith? How’d you sleep?”
He tips his head back and smiles. “Like a baby, actually. Once I got around to it. How about you?"
Shiro’s eyes are warm, his mouth still flushed. “About the same, actually.”
“Really? Huh. That’s funny.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Shiro touches the bruise he left on Keith’s neck, the only one the collar of his jacket can’t hide, and gives up a tired grin. “What a coincidence.”
The whole team is looking at them, aren’t they, and Lance is howling something tinged with disbelief but it’s fine, Keith isn’t worried about it; he’s not worried about a damn thing. For the moment, it’s the castle that’s bustling, brimming over with noise and ideas and life, while Keith’s head is quiet and settled, the joy of the night before pressing in on all sides.
“Good morning,” Shiro says, giving him one last squeeze, another lazy shot of a smile.
“Yeah,” Keith says to himself, to his last sip of coffee, to the goggled eyes of his teammates. “It is.”
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themoneybuff-blog · 5 years
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How Journaling Practices Have Helped My Financial Situation
Ive mentioned often on The Simple Dollar how journaling is a daily practice for me and has been off and on (but mostly on) since middle school in various forms. At times, its taken the form of simply cataloguing my day; at other times, Ive written in response to various prompts; today, its completely different (and Ill write about that in a bit). In any case, writing in my journal simply put, getting thoughts out of my head down on paper is something that is a daily part of my life. Why have I kept up with it for so long? How has it helped me in any way thats made it worth the time investment? And what does that practice look like? Thats what I want to share today. Lets start with the why. The Benefits of Journaling, Financial and Otherwise I keep up with a daily journaling practice for a lot of reasons. First of all, it feels like a mental relief to do it because it quiets the monologue in my head. Along with meditation, its one of the two most effective routine things Ive found in my life for getting the constantly chattering voice in my head to quiet down a little. That voice is constantly going over things I need to do, things Im thinking about or worried about, my upcoming plans, some problem Im interested in, and all kinds of other stray thoughts. That constant stream of thought is distracting. I find that dumping some of that stream of thought down on paper quiets that distracting voice pretty well, at least for a while. Ive found that one big burst of writing in my journal at the start of the day coupled with having a pocket notebook on me at all times to jot down other stray thoughts throughout the day keeps that voice a lot quieter and a lot less distracting. Second, I use it to work through challenging problems in my life that Im not quite sure how to solve. When I observe something I dont like in my life, my mind often worries on that problem without ever really coming to a good conclusion on it. Ill think about that problem over and over, but at best my idle thoughts will come up with really half-baked solutions. When I sit down and journal and dump that problem out on paper, I find that I almost always work toward an actual good solution to the problem (or problems) in my head. By writing out the problem as I see it, I usually get some better insight into whats really going on, and then as I write down that insight, more pop up, and eventually I lead myself to the real source of the problem and perhaps a start down the path to a good solution. This applies very well to personal finance. For example, it was writing in my journal that really helped me piece together that something was wrong with my financial life and gradually led me to the decision to make some major changes. It has helped me figure out what things in my life were frivolous expenses and which ones were not. It has helped me to identify situations where I was spending money nonsensically as an emotional response to some other situation in my life. Third, its helped me to understand complex ideas by taking a bunch of swirling bits and pieces Ive learned recently and didnt fully understand and combine them into something meaningful and comprehensible and useful. Many of my journal entries have originated from my thinking about something I read recently or experienced recently that I didnt quite understand, and by simply spelling it all out piece by piece, the idea came together for me. I used to do this a lot when I was in college, but I still do it quite frequently when Im reading something or when Ive had a difficult interaction with someone. For example, it was this practice that really helped me to understand investing and how index funds work and helped me decide that I should put as much of our investment money as possible into index funds. The ideas made sense on their own, but it was assembling the ideas and relating them to our own situation, which I did over a bunch of journaling sessions, that locked our retirement planning into place. I did the same thing when we were shopping for a home. Many of my entries during the months in which we were house shopping were oriented around figuring out how the house buying process worked, how mortgages worked, and so on. This actually leads well into my next point. Journaling has helped me come to a firm conclusion when there were a lot of options on the table. Often, decision making comes down to being able to filter through a lot of options, figure out which elements matter the most, and choose from those options based on that. Journaling has helped me with every piece of that process for many different major decisions in my life. As I noted earlier, journaling was essential in our home buying process. I wrote down extensive thoughts on each home we visited, the relative merits and drawbacks of each, and what each would look like financially. My journaling process helped Sarah and I choose a home that we could afford that met our needs, a home we still live in. Its helped me decide between investment options. Its helped me make career choices when I had several options on the table at a few points in my life. Simply writing through each of the options, figuring out what was good and bad about each one, and then coming to a clear decision not only helped me make a great decision at each of those crossroads, it also helped clear my head of constant worrying and constant thoughts on the subject. So, how exactly do I do this? What does my journaling practice look like? My Own Journaling Practice Ive used a number of practices over the years, but the one Ive used for the last few years, with a few tweaks, has been a small variation on the three morning pages journaling practice first popularized by Julia Cameron. In Camerons original practice, she simply suggested that a person sit down with a blank journal and start writing, filling up three pages in a journal with their writing before stopping for the day. Write about whatevers on your mind if its on your mind, just write it down, no matter how inane or pointless it seems. It gets that thought out of your head and makes space for whatevers next. Some days, everything is inane, and thats fine. Other days, youre working through some very difficult things, and thats fine, too. The goal is to empty that junk out of your head so you can get clean start to your day. I tried doing this exact thing for a while, but I ran into a number of small problems with it. The biggest one was that my handwriting is small and the pages in my journal are big. I tend to journal by writing in block capital letters it just feels the most comfortable to me and the writing is pretty small. Most of my journals are either full size pages or close to it. Thus, it can take a long time to simply fill up a page with words, even if Im writing as fast as I can. So, I modified the practice to what I call 45 morning minutes. I just set a timer for 45 minutes, sit down with my journal, open to the next blank page (or partial page), and start writing. When the timer goes off, I keep going until theres a clear break in thought and then I write a big double line across the page indicating the end of the day, and Im done. Journaling with a strict time limit keeps it within a reasonable time frame for me and makes it easy to schedule. Obviously, I do this in the morning, usually before anyone else is awake. I find that doing this early in the day is really effective at quieting down that internal monologue that distracts me with chatter and ideas throughout the day. Id rather have it quiet in the mornings and afternoons so that I can get focused work done. So, thats another big part of the equation for me: journaling in the morning quiets my internal monologue so that I can focus better during the work day. After I finish, I usually read back through my entry over the course of a few minutes, mostly to extract things that I need to get done in the near future. Are there any actionable items that I thought about or generated during that journaling? If so, I move them to my to-do list manager or to my calendar so I can find them later on in the day when Im actually doing stuff. Again, another key point: journaling often generates specific actions I need to work on or things I need to take care of, so I transfer those out to a to-do list. After that, I just close my journal and go about my day. There are a few obvious questions that come about from that description, so let me address them right now. I read old entries, but nothing older than a few months. After four or five months, the old entries start to read like they were written by another person living another life. Its familiar in the way that a distant memory is familiar, but it doesnt feel like me any more. When journal entries reach that point, then there isnt really any value to them any more, at least not for me. The method of journaling I use is not really a record of what I did each day, so once the entries arent fresh, I dont find any personal value in them. Ive changed enough as a person that the situations and solutions I wrote about in old journals no longer apply specifically to new situations. I havent actively read journal entries more than a few months old in a long time, and every time I happen to see one, I really dont care to read it. There are a few reasons for this, but most of it boils down to the fact that my journals reflect my active thinking at that moment, but when that moment fades away, theres not much value there. Its not a record of my life, but an outpouring of my current thought. There are some specific reasons, too. I am often deeply critical of myself, something that doesnt need to be re-read and dwelled upon. I sometimes tear myself to shreds when Im writing a journal entry. Im extremely critical of my flaws and mistakes, and while that can be good in the moment when Im assessing a situation or setting out a goal, it doesnt do me any good to read it later or for someone else to read it. I am sometimes honestly critical of my children in a way that I wouldnt want them to read; I do this not to be cruel, but to figure out how to be a good parent to them. It does not make me a good parent to pretend that my children are perfect and flawless. Rather, one of the best things I can do as a parent is to honestly assess their good features and their flaws and take those into account when I figure out how to communicate well with them and guide them toward good decision making practices, life ambitions, and things of that nature. For example, I might write down that one of my children is extremely conscientious of others but is sometimes excessively boastful, or I might write that another child is richly thoughtful but very quick to frustration and anger. (Obviously, these arent actual observations and are quite sanitized to boot, just examples so you understand what I mean.) Those arent thoughts that I want them to read, or anyone else to read. The same is true for my wife and my role as a husband and, occasionally, some of my friends and my role as their friend. I do similar evaluations of my wife at times. In what ways is she amazing? In what ways can I complement her with my strengths? In what ways does she complement my own weaknesses? How can I help out in areas where shes not as strong? Im sure shes glad that I think about such things and consider how to be a better husband, but I dont think even she would want to actually read such thoughts. The same thing is true if I assess a friend, particularly if theyre asking me for some life advice. I want to give the best advice I can to them, and that sometimes means being critical, and sometimes those words find their way into my journals. Thus, I dont save old journals, at least not anything older than my most recent one. I keep my current journal and my previous one in a secure place where they cant easily be found. My current journal is easy for me to grab in the mornings, but its not in a place where it would likely be found. When my current journal is full, I destroy the previous journal after I read through it again. For a while, I was keeping digital copies of my old journals, but I found that I was never looking at them, didnt really want to ever look at them, and didnt want anyone else to find them, so I stopped doing this. The downside to others finding those thoughts was worth more than the upside of any potential limited use I might have for them in the future. The policy of destroying the journals and keeping the current one secure lets me be more unguarded with my journaling. Given that I know my journals wont be around for posterity, I feel more comfortable just letting my thoughts fly on the page. I dont worry about who might read them or how they might appear for posterity. At worst, the most recent journal or two might be found, and that doesnt worry me too much. I usually start off each journal with a note saying that this is a collection of my unguarded thoughts as I worked through personal decisions and I would appreciate that the journal would be destroyed upon discovery if I were to pass. I vastly prefer handwritten journaling, but I may switch to using a stylus and writing on a table in the future as those technologies improve; writing by hand provides a clarity of thought that typing doesnt quite provide for me. For me, typing is conducive to rapidly recording ideas, but the process doesnt allow me any space to think about them. If I want to explore my thoughts, consider things, and actually remember them, I write things out by hand. This is true for journaling, but its also true for taking notes at meetings, taking notes when Im reading, taking notes during a lecture, and so on. I write all of those notes by hand and, if theres potential value that I might get out of them later, I convert them to digital format. I feel like taking notes with an Apple Pencil on an iPad is 90% of the way to where I want a stylus to be, but its not all the way there yet. When its perfect, writing thoughts down on a tablet using a stylus will be the best way to journal and take notes because it offers the advantages of both writing by hand and digital notes, but for now, its not quite there yet, and given a choice between the two, the thoughtfulness and retention of writing by hand outweighs typing out journal entries for me. I use Leuchtturm 1917 journals and either Uniball Signo 207, Pilot G2, or Pilot Juice pens. The journal isnt a requirement Ive used all kinds of different things over the years but I really like the size and the binding and paper quality of that specific journal. One of those usually lasts about two and a half months for my journaling purposes. As for the pens, I really only have three requirements for a pen: it needs to write when I want it without a lot of futzing around, it needs to have a thin line and not bleed all over the page or make a mess, and it needs to not leak in my pocket. The pens listed up there pass those tests with flying colors. I can get weeks and weeks out of writing with just one of them and it costs less than a dollar, which is good enough for me. Id rather spend $0.75 on a pen that will write for weeks without fail and not make a mess or leak than a $0.25 pen or a freebie that will need a bunch of waving around or tinkering when I want it to write, leave a ton of messy ink on the page, and inevitably leave a big blotch of ink on the paper or in my pocket. Final Thoughts Spending some time each day journaling simply writing my thoughts down on paper not only helps me piece through the problems in my life and ideas in my head, it also helps clear my mind and make it easier to focus on the tasks of the day because it quiets the voice in my head that would otherwise keep running through those problems and ideas. It has helped me not only figure out a bunch of financial and professional problems, its also helped keep my mind focused when actually doing work to earn an income. I find that my 45 morning minutes practice works extremely well for me, but there are many practices out there that range from simply listing the events of the day, writing what youre grateful for, brainstorming, and many other things. I highly recommend trying several practices until you find one that works well for you and then stick with it for a while. You might just find that it becomes an essential part of your life toolbox. Good luck! https://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-journaling-practices-have-helped-my-financial-situation/
0 notes
themoneybuff-blog · 5 years
Text
How Journaling Practices Have Helped My Financial Situation
Ive mentioned often on The Simple Dollar how journaling is a daily practice for me and has been off and on (but mostly on) since middle school in various forms. At times, its taken the form of simply cataloguing my day; at other times, Ive written in response to various prompts; today, its completely different (and Ill write about that in a bit). In any case, writing in my journal simply put, getting thoughts out of my head down on paper is something that is a daily part of my life. Why have I kept up with it for so long? How has it helped me in any way thats made it worth the time investment? And what does that practice look like? Thats what I want to share today. Lets start with the why. The Benefits of Journaling, Financial and Otherwise I keep up with a daily journaling practice for a lot of reasons. First of all, it feels like a mental relief to do it because it quiets the monologue in my head. Along with meditation, its one of the two most effective routine things Ive found in my life for getting the constantly chattering voice in my head to quiet down a little. That voice is constantly going over things I need to do, things Im thinking about or worried about, my upcoming plans, some problem Im interested in, and all kinds of other stray thoughts. That constant stream of thought is distracting. I find that dumping some of that stream of thought down on paper quiets that distracting voice pretty well, at least for a while. Ive found that one big burst of writing in my journal at the start of the day coupled with having a pocket notebook on me at all times to jot down other stray thoughts throughout the day keeps that voice a lot quieter and a lot less distracting. Second, I use it to work through challenging problems in my life that Im not quite sure how to solve. When I observe something I dont like in my life, my mind often worries on that problem without ever really coming to a good conclusion on it. Ill think about that problem over and over, but at best my idle thoughts will come up with really half-baked solutions. When I sit down and journal and dump that problem out on paper, I find that I almost always work toward an actual good solution to the problem (or problems) in my head. By writing out the problem as I see it, I usually get some better insight into whats really going on, and then as I write down that insight, more pop up, and eventually I lead myself to the real source of the problem and perhaps a start down the path to a good solution. This applies very well to personal finance. For example, it was writing in my journal that really helped me piece together that something was wrong with my financial life and gradually led me to the decision to make some major changes. It has helped me figure out what things in my life were frivolous expenses and which ones were not. It has helped me to identify situations where I was spending money nonsensically as an emotional response to some other situation in my life. Third, its helped me to understand complex ideas by taking a bunch of swirling bits and pieces Ive learned recently and didnt fully understand and combine them into something meaningful and comprehensible and useful. Many of my journal entries have originated from my thinking about something I read recently or experienced recently that I didnt quite understand, and by simply spelling it all out piece by piece, the idea came together for me. I used to do this a lot when I was in college, but I still do it quite frequently when Im reading something or when Ive had a difficult interaction with someone. For example, it was this practice that really helped me to understand investing and how index funds work and helped me decide that I should put as much of our investment money as possible into index funds. The ideas made sense on their own, but it was assembling the ideas and relating them to our own situation, which I did over a bunch of journaling sessions, that locked our retirement planning into place. I did the same thing when we were shopping for a home. Many of my entries during the months in which we were house shopping were oriented around figuring out how the house buying process worked, how mortgages worked, and so on. This actually leads well into my next point. Journaling has helped me come to a firm conclusion when there were a lot of options on the table. Often, decision making comes down to being able to filter through a lot of options, figure out which elements matter the most, and choose from those options based on that. Journaling has helped me with every piece of that process for many different major decisions in my life. As I noted earlier, journaling was essential in our home buying process. I wrote down extensive thoughts on each home we visited, the relative merits and drawbacks of each, and what each would look like financially. My journaling process helped Sarah and I choose a home that we could afford that met our needs, a home we still live in. Its helped me decide between investment options. Its helped me make career choices when I had several options on the table at a few points in my life. Simply writing through each of the options, figuring out what was good and bad about each one, and then coming to a clear decision not only helped me make a great decision at each of those crossroads, it also helped clear my head of constant worrying and constant thoughts on the subject. So, how exactly do I do this? What does my journaling practice look like? My Own Journaling Practice Ive used a number of practices over the years, but the one Ive used for the last few years, with a few tweaks, has been a small variation on the three morning pages journaling practice first popularized by Julia Cameron. In Camerons original practice, she simply suggested that a person sit down with a blank journal and start writing, filling up three pages in a journal with their writing before stopping for the day. Write about whatevers on your mind if its on your mind, just write it down, no matter how inane or pointless it seems. It gets that thought out of your head and makes space for whatevers next. Some days, everything is inane, and thats fine. Other days, youre working through some very difficult things, and thats fine, too. The goal is to empty that junk out of your head so you can get clean start to your day. I tried doing this exact thing for a while, but I ran into a number of small problems with it. The biggest one was that my handwriting is small and the pages in my journal are big. I tend to journal by writing in block capital letters it just feels the most comfortable to me and the writing is pretty small. Most of my journals are either full size pages or close to it. Thus, it can take a long time to simply fill up a page with words, even if Im writing as fast as I can. So, I modified the practice to what I call 45 morning minutes. I just set a timer for 45 minutes, sit down with my journal, open to the next blank page (or partial page), and start writing. When the timer goes off, I keep going until theres a clear break in thought and then I write a big double line across the page indicating the end of the day, and Im done. Journaling with a strict time limit keeps it within a reasonable time frame for me and makes it easy to schedule. Obviously, I do this in the morning, usually before anyone else is awake. I find that doing this early in the day is really effective at quieting down that internal monologue that distracts me with chatter and ideas throughout the day. Id rather have it quiet in the mornings and afternoons so that I can get focused work done. So, thats another big part of the equation for me: journaling in the morning quiets my internal monologue so that I can focus better during the work day. After I finish, I usually read back through my entry over the course of a few minutes, mostly to extract things that I need to get done in the near future. Are there any actionable items that I thought about or generated during that journaling? If so, I move them to my to-do list manager or to my calendar so I can find them later on in the day when Im actually doing stuff. Again, another key point: journaling often generates specific actions I need to work on or things I need to take care of, so I transfer those out to a to-do list. After that, I just close my journal and go about my day. There are a few obvious questions that come about from that description, so let me address them right now. I read old entries, but nothing older than a few months. After four or five months, the old entries start to read like they were written by another person living another life. Its familiar in the way that a distant memory is familiar, but it doesnt feel like me any more. When journal entries reach that point, then there isnt really any value to them any more, at least not for me. The method of journaling I use is not really a record of what I did each day, so once the entries arent fresh, I dont find any personal value in them. Ive changed enough as a person that the situations and solutions I wrote about in old journals no longer apply specifically to new situations. I havent actively read journal entries more than a few months old in a long time, and every time I happen to see one, I really dont care to read it. There are a few reasons for this, but most of it boils down to the fact that my journals reflect my active thinking at that moment, but when that moment fades away, theres not much value there. Its not a record of my life, but an outpouring of my current thought. There are some specific reasons, too. I am often deeply critical of myself, something that doesnt need to be re-read and dwelled upon. I sometimes tear myself to shreds when Im writing a journal entry. Im extremely critical of my flaws and mistakes, and while that can be good in the moment when Im assessing a situation or setting out a goal, it doesnt do me any good to read it later or for someone else to read it. I am sometimes honestly critical of my children in a way that I wouldnt want them to read; I do this not to be cruel, but to figure out how to be a good parent to them. It does not make me a good parent to pretend that my children are perfect and flawless. Rather, one of the best things I can do as a parent is to honestly assess their good features and their flaws and take those into account when I figure out how to communicate well with them and guide them toward good decision making practices, life ambitions, and things of that nature. For example, I might write down that one of my children is extremely conscientious of others but is sometimes excessively boastful, or I might write that another child is richly thoughtful but very quick to frustration and anger. (Obviously, these arent actual observations and are quite sanitized to boot, just examples so you understand what I mean.) Those arent thoughts that I want them to read, or anyone else to read. The same is true for my wife and my role as a husband and, occasionally, some of my friends and my role as their friend. I do similar evaluations of my wife at times. In what ways is she amazing? In what ways can I complement her with my strengths? In what ways does she complement my own weaknesses? How can I help out in areas where shes not as strong? Im sure shes glad that I think about such things and consider how to be a better husband, but I dont think even she would want to actually read such thoughts. The same thing is true if I assess a friend, particularly if theyre asking me for some life advice. I want to give the best advice I can to them, and that sometimes means being critical, and sometimes those words find their way into my journals. Thus, I dont save old journals, at least not anything older than my most recent one. I keep my current journal and my previous one in a secure place where they cant easily be found. My current journal is easy for me to grab in the mornings, but its not in a place where it would likely be found. When my current journal is full, I destroy the previous journal after I read through it again. For a while, I was keeping digital copies of my old journals, but I found that I was never looking at them, didnt really want to ever look at them, and didnt want anyone else to find them, so I stopped doing this. The downside to others finding those thoughts was worth more than the upside of any potential limited use I might have for them in the future. The policy of destroying the journals and keeping the current one secure lets me be more unguarded with my journaling. Given that I know my journals wont be around for posterity, I feel more comfortable just letting my thoughts fly on the page. I dont worry about who might read them or how they might appear for posterity. At worst, the most recent journal or two might be found, and that doesnt worry me too much. I usually start off each journal with a note saying that this is a collection of my unguarded thoughts as I worked through personal decisions and I would appreciate that the journal would be destroyed upon discovery if I were to pass. I vastly prefer handwritten journaling, but I may switch to using a stylus and writing on a table in the future as those technologies improve; writing by hand provides a clarity of thought that typing doesnt quite provide for me. For me, typing is conducive to rapidly recording ideas, but the process doesnt allow me any space to think about them. If I want to explore my thoughts, consider things, and actually remember them, I write things out by hand. This is true for journaling, but its also true for taking notes at meetings, taking notes when Im reading, taking notes during a lecture, and so on. I write all of those notes by hand and, if theres potential value that I might get out of them later, I convert them to digital format. I feel like taking notes with an Apple Pencil on an iPad is 90% of the way to where I want a stylus to be, but its not all the way there yet. When its perfect, writing thoughts down on a tablet using a stylus will be the best way to journal and take notes because it offers the advantages of both writing by hand and digital notes, but for now, its not quite there yet, and given a choice between the two, the thoughtfulness and retention of writing by hand outweighs typing out journal entries for me. I use Leuchtturm 1917 journals and either Uniball Signo 207, Pilot G2, or Pilot Juice pens. The journal isnt a requirement Ive used all kinds of different things over the years but I really like the size and the binding and paper quality of that specific journal. One of those usually lasts about two and a half months for my journaling purposes. As for the pens, I really only have three requirements for a pen: it needs to write when I want it without a lot of futzing around, it needs to have a thin line and not bleed all over the page or make a mess, and it needs to not leak in my pocket. The pens listed up there pass those tests with flying colors. I can get weeks and weeks out of writing with just one of them and it costs less than a dollar, which is good enough for me. Id rather spend $0.75 on a pen that will write for weeks without fail and not make a mess or leak than a $0.25 pen or a freebie that will need a bunch of waving around or tinkering when I want it to write, leave a ton of messy ink on the page, and inevitably leave a big blotch of ink on the paper or in my pocket. Final Thoughts Spending some time each day journaling simply writing my thoughts down on paper not only helps me piece through the problems in my life and ideas in my head, it also helps clear my mind and make it easier to focus on the tasks of the day because it quiets the voice in my head that would otherwise keep running through those problems and ideas. It has helped me not only figure out a bunch of financial and professional problems, its also helped keep my mind focused when actually doing work to earn an income. I find that my 45 morning minutes practice works extremely well for me, but there are many practices out there that range from simply listing the events of the day, writing what youre grateful for, brainstorming, and many other things. I highly recommend trying several practices until you find one that works well for you and then stick with it for a while. You might just find that it becomes an essential part of your life toolbox. Good luck! https://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-journaling-practices-have-helped-my-financial-situation/
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