I love to write. I’ve journaled since I was 9 years old, and I actually have that first journal (you can see it in the photo above), with the little lock and key that my mom gave me. Unfortunately, I wrote in pencil and much of it has smeared, alas. I chuckle to remember one of my writing goals at the time – take notes on the things that my mom did that I wanted to make sure that I didn’t do when I had kids. Clearly, righting wrongs and continuous improvement have been a focus of mine for a very long time.

I owe writing so much of who I am and where I am.

There’s the very concrete stuff – my jobs since I graduated college have been in the field of communications. But there’s also the intangible – writing to feel and writing to know & think. Writing has helped me to know who I am, what’s most important to me, to figure out where I want to go, and who I want to be. Writing has helped me to see when I’m not living up to my values and challenged me to do better, to be better.

Writing is a process, a way of thinking and if you’re not writing to yourself, you’re leaving a vital source of knowledge untapped.

I love to do something that’s called free writing. I’ve also heard it called automatic writing. It’s when you set a timer for 7 – 15 minutes and just write. Sometimes I have a topic that I’m writing about, and sometimes I don’t.

Free writing is a way to get some language out – consider it clay – which you then inspect to learn what you’re thinking about but probably didn’t even know you were thinking about. So I go through the result of the free writing to see what’s emerged. 

It’s not the only way of knowing, but it’s a very valuable tool. And then the beautiful thing is that you can go back and make connections – you can track yourself and your line of thought.