Mental Space
One way I knew the holiday break was good for me was that my daily notes started to get longer again. In Obsidian, the note-taking app I use, I have it set to create a dated note for each day. Unlike the complicated setups of some people, mine is basically just a blank text file, meant to hold all the things that occur to me, the screenshots of interesting things I see, plus a few small fields for gratitude journaling and what I call a “contemplation point”—something that was top of mind for me on a given day. For me, note-taking and fiction writing are deeply linked, with each feeding one another. Output isn’t everything, but when I’m taking more notes, I tend to be thinking a bit deeper, too.
I’ve written before about my process getting back into fiction writing a couple of years ago, where I felt like I had to prime myself to come up with ideas, cultivating that type of thinking once more. I think note taking is the same way. If you’re not used to writing notes on the thoughts that arise throughout a day, or much else besides the odd grocery list here and there, it can feel weird at first. But it’s the sort of thing that once you start noticing, it shifts your whole perspective towards it. I don’t note down everything, of course. And even among the things I do write down, a lot of it is just stupid stuff (from yesterday’s note: "What sort of “sport” is SUV referring to?"). Next to this one-off note, I have a few excerpts from an article I was reading, and an attempt at a response, or at least a working through of questions that occurred to me. It’s arbitrary where you draw the line between “worth writing down” and “fine to let go,” but simply thinking about what that line would be is important.
There’s a definite gap between when I look through my notes trying to find something, and when I look through just because I’m bored.
I like to try and go back through my notes, both as part of a reflective, journalistic curiosity to see what I was thinking about each day, but also as a means of reviewing my notes with the benefit of time and distance—looking at them from a 10,000 foot view oftentimes helps put them in context with one another, or even connect them in some meaningful way. This is part of my weekly review, each Saturday, but also something I tend to do when I’m bored. I think boredom is an essential state. When you feel bored, you’re at enough of a remove from immediate concerns, able to take a step back and figure out where to go next. It’s this sort of distance I find lacking most in our modern world, where entertainment is always in your pocket, and silence is hard to find. There’s a definite gap between when I look through my notes trying to find something, and when I look through just because I’m bored. When I was going to the art museum a lot more, I liked to go with a specific artwork in mind, finding that one item, and then leaving; but that sort of trip is completely different from one where you’re just wandering.
I love the feeling after stepping into the warm afternoon Sun after finishing a book, and suddenly seeing the world filtered through all you’ve just seen, felt, experienced.
In my pursuit of more reading, I’ve flown through a couple of books already. Most recently, I re-read Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, which I loved once anew. I read it digitally, but I found myself highlighting dozens and dozens of passages, something I usually do more sparingly. I love Murakami and Norwegian Wood in particular, and I think part of it was simply my recent focus, but another part of it was the lack of demands on my time, the space to think a bit deeper, clearer. I spent at least an hour or two each day reading, highlighting things that stood out to me, flowing into new ideas, and then new notes.
What I love most in art is the feeling after stepping into the warm afternoon Sun after finishing a book, stepping out from the dark theater into the evening light, and suddenly seeing the world filtered through all you’ve just seen, felt, experienced. It’s the same thing I’ve felt after I’ve been in a groove with meditating for a while. But it turns out this feeling is a lot more readily available than I thought. You just have to make sure you’re looking for it.
