Journaling Articles

Conversations with Uncertainty

When I struggle with indecision, warring factions take over my mind. One side tells me to try a new course of action, while the other side may encourage me to stay the course. Former Nobel winner, Pablo Neruda, captures the Indecision War in his poem “We Are Many.”

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.

Standing at a crossroad, I am Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth . . .

I cannot decide which road to travel and become Neruda again:

And so I never know just who I am,
Nor how many I am, nor who we will be being.

Uncertainty puts the brain in overdrive. We feel the temptation to rush toward decision. But wait! There is reason to slow down – to explore the quagmire  – to embrace the struggle as did Robert Frost and Pablo Neruda.

Good writing is grounded in the exploration of the indecisive ambiguity.  In her book, Writing the Natural Way, Gabrielle Rico suggests that if a writer does not explore alternative points of view, the words will be one-dimensional, flat, and unconvincing. If   our words are to ring true, our writing reflects the complexities of real life. In other words, if we fail to dig into the dark side of a love affair or a celebration such as Christmas or Hanukah, our thoughts  may seem simplistic, naïve  . . . maybe even sappy.  After all, a reader can only relate to a writer who struggles as he or she does. Neruda’s “We Are Many” ends with these lines:

I should like to see if the same thing happens
To other people as it does to me,
To see if as many people are as I am,
And if they seem the same way to themselves.

Writing Prompt: Next time you are stuck in a quandary, explore the yin and yang of a decision. Relax with a pen and follow the ebb and flow of your mind. A conversation or dialogue between  “stay the course” and “change the course” voices will help uncover the warring factions in your head. You will probably uncover a resolution in the dialogue and there may be a poem hiding inside the pages you write.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2006

Family Stories

Vacation waits on the other side of tomorrow. For years my clan has gathered in Northern Idaho for a week of fishing, hiking and cooling our tootsies in the lake. As I write this, I picture the others preparing for wonderland in four separate states, on two different coasts. They load their bags with t-shirts and shorts, flip flops and sunscreen, books and a knapsack of family dynamics.

Without a doubt, before the clock runs out on our summer reunion, someone’s ego will be bruised, someone’s nose will be out of joint, and someone else will feel justified or vindicated for their unintended slight or comment. Such is the nature of families past and present. From our families we garner many of our quirks and hang-up’s. Most often the same people who love and support us also detonate our vulnerable hot-spots.

Write about your family so you can understand yourself better. Your writing will also help you understand the people in your clan. If you spend vacation time with your family, as I do with mine, you will undoubtedly harvest a bountiful crop of stories. Use them to write a journal, an essay, or memoir.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2009

 Journal Your Way to Success (January 2008)

Happy New Year!
It’s a time-honored tradition to extend the New Year greeting for a handful of weeks each year. As I write them, I wonder, why we only wish people a happy new year.

Why not Happy New Month in February or October? Why not Happy New Day? Every day brings a new blossom. Each one offers another opportunity to make a resolution and keep it. Why save resolutions for the beginning of the calendar year?

How many of us start the morning full of promises to ourselves . . . “Today I will stick to my diet. Today I will go to the gym.” We may make the same promise over and over only to end the day with Scarlett O'Hara's classic “tomorrow is another day,” which indeed is true.

It comes as no surprise that I offer your journal as a way to make those daily resolutions stick. When you write things down, it helps make things happen. Most of us make a shopping list before walking into the grocery store. If we wander willy-nilly through the supermarket, we are likely to exit without the needed items and, worse yet, end up with a cart filled with impulse items. It helps to know your purpose, even if this purpose is only milk, deodorant, and a frozen pizza.

A daily session with your journal helps you stay on task with more than a grocery list. Write down your daily goal and a few ideas to help move you toward it. Make each day’s “resolution” simple and manageable. With journal in hand, you will bring home fewer impulsive missteps and more success in meeting your goals.

Finally, if you miss your goal today, write about it again tomorrow. Sort through the obstacles. With time you will find yourself on track. Happy New Day to you.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2007

Draw on Walls 

We are born with minds that cry for things to make sense. Making meaning is part of our nature. In chaos or calm, we are driven to this end. Finding meaning is truly essential.

Our ancestors drew pictures on rock walls to help them understand saber-tooth tigers, hostile tribes, the stars, and the weather. Even prehistoric man knew the importance of recording his story. As a result he left history on the walls of his cave. Since most adults were taught not to draw on the walls, modern women and men turn to paper and pen to untangle the unexplainable and capture their stories.

A few years ago my mother had a terrible accident. Writing about those dark days helped quiet my nightmares after the accident. I invited friends and loved ones to hear those journal entries, but above all I needed to write the story for myself. Writing it all down put things in order and captured small, but not trivial, moments. My journal insured that I would not forget. When I finished, I noticed that I felt a sense of peace. Things finally made sense. What a relief.

Someone recently asked me why so many people are keeping journals. I've been thinking about the question. Maybe living in he 21st century pulls us too far from our roots. Maybe our pace moves so quickly that we lose track of our stories. Perhaps we need to understand our battles in a world filled with microchips and terrorists.

Think of it. There's a place where anyone can express thoughts and feelings -– even controversial thoughts and feelings. Often journal entries serve as a practice field for words we eventually speak. Pick up your pen – write down what is happening to you. Write what is happening inside your body and mind. These words tell your story – the real story of where you have been and where you are going.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2007

Reasons To Make Writing Part of Your Life

Some of the reasons to make writing part of every day.

Reason #1 – Write To Heal Grief
Sheila Bender recently published A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief. Her story tells how poetry helped her walk a painful journey before and after the decision to end life-support for her 25-year old son. No stranger to personal writing, Sheila Bender has authored a dozen how-to books on writing and selling the personal essay. The lessons in those books come home as she offers us a window into grief and her private healing.

Reason #2 – Write To Record Your Life
I recently discovered my grandfather’s diaries in Mom’s cupboard. Since his death 25 years ago, the notebooks have been buried under some magazines and dusty old cookbooks. The yellowing pages, which cover the last 50 years of his life, now spread before me. They offer more than one man’s story. These crude notebooks contain pieces of history and pieces of me.

My grandfather completed eighth grade before going to work as a type-setter during World War I. His work required him to arrange cast metal letters to compose words, paragraphs, and entire books. I think of typesetting as a bit like laying Scrabble words out on the board. Once formed, the words are bound together and mounted in a press and inked. Finally an impression is made on paper. The work required scrupulous attention to detail and the words from others’ pens.

At home, my grandfather favored a worn upholstered chair with a large Webster’s Dictionary positioned on the table to his left. From this station, he maintained a life with words. He read the paper, worked the daily crossword, wrote to his family, read history books, and wrote his diary. Now that diary offers missing pieces of family history, remembrances of the world during his era, and glimpses of the man who spawned my love affair with language.

Reason # 3 – Write To Discover What You Believe
As you write, rapid firing thoughts and feelings come into focus. Sheila Bender says, “you find what is at the bottom of your heart.”
We do best when we “know our own mind.” Yet this is no easy assignment. Knowing your mind means sorting through the reams of thoughts and opinions heard across the dining room table or in the locker room. It means choosing a belief in spite of contradictions and hypocrisy of others. Knowing your mind means focusing your brain's complex, super-sonic fragment-thoughts to form a congruent idea. Then you must decide if your thought is worthy to become part of your opinion.

As I said, knowing your mind is no simple task. Each brain houses about one-hundred billion neurons. These neurons, as if in some kind of uber dating game, may hook up with or connect with about forty thousand other neurons. All told, your brain has the capacity to make more connections than stars in the universe. How can we know our mind with this stratospheric number of possible conclusions to any puzzle? The task is more than staggering.

Although it may seem like a neuronal game of bumper cars, we carve out some familiar and repetitious territory. With the field narrowed, getting cozy with your mind becomes a bit less daunting. Over time we can sort the options to arrive at knowing (at least to some degree) who we are and for what we stand.

Writing helps. A moving pen will help focus rapid firing thoughts and feelings. In essence, the act of recording your thoughts helps dim the lights on the extraneous chatter of a free-floating mind. Writing things down turns the spotlight on important matters. The process helps rein-in the brain that otherwise can run pell-mell from here-to-there-to-everywhere.

After a few minutes of reflective writing, things that seemed chaotic and overwhelming begin to make sense. Your overworked brain settles down. Clarity finds its way to the surface. Voila! This makes sense. This is what I believe.

If you have never had this experience, I urge you to try sorting things out with paper and pen. The writer, David Hare, put it this way: “The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.”

Reason #4 Write For Fun
What better reason to renew (or begin) your writing practice than to relax and play? As you enter a new day, resolve to enjoy yourself. A short session with your journal can be mindful and soul-searching, but it can also be playful and creative. Often a session is productive and creative at the same time. My mission on The Write Path is to foster both growth and creativity.

Try letting your pen take charge by putting your critical mind on hold. Let one word lead to another and another – the word house may lead to mouse or louse or roust or joust– or all of the above. A walk down a yellow brick road may take you beyond the rainbow where you discover your prudish Uncle Charlie living in a cave, surrounded by voluptuous women. Why not?

The playful mind is a calm one. A relaxed mind opens the door to endless possibility. In the end, isn’t that what creative living is all about?

© Susan Reuling Furness – 2010

The Approval Trap - Another Reason to Pick Up Paper and Pen

Approval works for sofas, not people. Commercial Furniture may allow me to take home a dark green sectional on approval. If the pieces look good in my living room, I will pay the bill. Only then do I give the sofa permission to stay. Once it is mine, I determine the fate of this overstuffed, behemoth. Someday in the future, when I detect broken cushions and faded fabric, I will call Good Will Industries to whisk the sofa away. It will be gone. Disapproval begins when approval ends.

So it seems in many families. When I was young, if I displeased my father, he withdrew his approval. I felt as powerless as a sofa. If I did not behave, Dad threatened to call the local orphanage. By the way, he never did. Still I felt compelled to walk a narrow line and keep my image squeaky-clean.

Like many others, including the sofa, I was designed and fabricated to please someone else. As a child I had no voice of my own; I mimicked my parent's thoughts to maintain my father’s approval.

Thinking more along these lines, I realize that Criticism and Approval are Siamese twins. Together they become a “perfect child”. When Criticism torments, Approval placates. This is how they stay out of trouble. Approval wins smiles, blue ribbons, and pats on the back. It makes great sense when you are a kid, but continuing to seek approval as an adult means we are no more independent or thoughtful than a sofa.

At some point we get rid of other people's furniture . . . furnish our lives with our own thoughts and opinions . . . develop a voice of our own . . . give up on approval. A personal journal provides a pathway to your voice - the one and only, unique, “true you." John Updike called it "your own brand of magic." I like that.

© Susan Reuling Furness – 2001 (R-2008)

Weaving Your Way Toward Your Soul

Every writer feels divorced from the Muse now and then.  Recently I found myself floundering on that writer’s flatline. My doldrums pivoted around “busy-ness,” which is the death sentence for creativity. A frenzied pace suffocates the Muse. Hyper-focused on getting things done allows no room for relaxed reverie.

An overloaded calendar ambushes me all too frequently. I am aware that many people venerate the idea of being busy. Do I buy into the belief that I am good person because I am busy? Do I embrace my father’s idea that only busiest people are hard working, diligent, and industrious? I hear the family’s motto: don’t be an indolent slug.

Fortunately I recognize that busyness will not make me important. There are busy people who are important, but most busy people simply feel important. In truth, I feel less important when I’m too busy. An overloaded schedule pinpoints my focus on my own little microcosm of things to do. I become a minor actor in the bigger picture of the daily drama. I miss out on much of the adventure, fun, and emotion happening around me. I feel small and invisible as I lose touch with friends and family. Most of all, I fall out of touch with myself.

Out-of-touch also means losing touch with the Muse. At times like these, all that remains of my wandering mind is an escape artist. In the tempest of things to do, either I fixate on getting things done or playing hookie and planning escape.

One morning recently, I picked up the paper and discovered news to validate the importance of honoring the Muse. The Associated Press reports that a researcher, at Cal State Santa Barbara, is studying the wandering mind. Jonathan Schooler believes our daydreaming, zoned-out, contemplative, moments are more important than our parents or teachers led us to believe. They never told us (who knew?) we were restoring our brains and discovering our souls when we slipped into a day-dreamy reverie.

Reflection and contemplation (a.k.a. the musing & wandering mind) rely on slower, broader brain waves; waves, which in turn activate areas in the right hemisphere where new genes are expressed. Since the 1990’s we’ve known that these genes seed new neuronal pathways to help us learn and maintain a vital brain.

But Jonathan Schooler suggests that we also develop a sense of who we are when we daydream. Schooler believes that through private reflection we come to develop a self and find our soul.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I look forward to the day when the world applauds Susie for doodling on her math exam or gazing out the window. When I was in second grade, I faced the evil Miss Crook when my musing pull me off -task. Where are you now Miss Crook? Better yet, what happened to your soul after you punished me for trying to discover mine?

There are two simple reasons (if neuroscience and souls can be simple) why this matters to you as a writer. First, you need to be in touch with your quiet, reflective thoughts so the Muse and your soul can connect. Creativity, after all, is an expression of your most inner thoughts and fantasies. Secondly, even if you are overwhelmed and separated from Madam Muse and yourself, your wandering pen will slow the brain waves, which helps you find your way back. Just writing about being lost helps.

In her book, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron suggests an artist date with your self once a week. The author suggests sitting down to write, visiting a gallery, or taking a stroll with your camera. I’m climbing onboard with that suggestion. It may save my brain. Maybe it will help my soul. Certainly I will have more fun than spending another hour fulfilling still another obligation on my calendar. I hope you’ll plan a few artist dates too. Let’s keep the Muse alive and save our souls.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2010

Clear Your Head with A Pen

Call it what you may – confusion, overload, stress – when emotion runs high, the circuitry in my mind jams. Thinking wigs-out.
Before committing myself to keeping a journal, I believed there was no way to unscramble my brain in the short term. I was victim to the mess inside.

Today I reach for a pen, a keyboard, or even a stick to write in the sand. I record the scrambled-egg thoughts and mysteriously my thoughts unscramble. It seems as if someone waves a magic wand; soon things make sense.

Recently I received news that a family member was at death’s door. While other family members fretted, I stood at the kitchen counter recording the chaos in my head:

When someone is dying

And you live far away

Knowing your cry won’t

Alter the day

Someone is dying

Your heart waits in hell

The world loses color

To death’s threatening spell.

Somehow eight lines, scribbled on a yellow tablet, lowered my anxiety. A few minutes later, I was calm enough to offer support and encouragement to someone else in the family.

Don’t get me wrong, I did not share my writing with anyone in the room that day. I hardly considered it profound. These lines, which flew from the pen, simply represent the raw thoughts that were flooding my brain. My journal, like a sponge for chaos, soaked up the feelings and cleared my head. In my book, that matters a lot in a time of crisis. There will be plenty of time for tears later.

So it goes with many of the emotions that clog our minds. Fear, anxiety, anger, and debilitating grief all respond to paper and pen. Long ago my dear niece had close call with crazed motorcyclist.  Here are the lines I scrawled on a napkin in a coffee shop after the man disappeared in traffic. I transferred them to my journal that evening.

My anger wears a heavy cloak

Made of poison fabric

Shrapnel threads. A fiendish cape

Stylish with a dagger.

Would I prefer to scream my rage at the maniac motorcyclist? Maybe, but probably not. Knowing what I know of road rage, my words on a napkin were the safer approach. Would it have been more satisfying to see him ticketed or arrested? I’ll never know. What I do know is that, given the man’s hasty escape, I was left with no recourse. What remained was a nasty pit in my stomach.  Writing helped take the edge off my rage.

The words in your journal do not need to be poetic or profound. When anger strikes, a simple ^#@** will help. It takes no genius to write,“Arghhh! That stupid SOB nearly killed her. People like that should be put in jail, sentenced to hard labor, hung up by the fingernails.”  Write it any way that works – any words to capture the screams inside your head.

That is the secret – to get the gnawing, scrambled emotion out of you and onto the page! The good news is this: the emotional release that comes from writing persists. Unlike spoken words – yelling, screaming, and/or whining – which disappear in the mist, the written word remains.  A scrambled brain will try to hang onto trauma, no matter how large or small. The frightened mind does not want to forget, but once your thoughts and feelings are recorded, your mind can relax and let go because the episode and feelings are carefully preserved. Writing it down releases the obsessive emotion. Write it down - that is how I spell R-E-L-I-E-F.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2010

When Things Get Tough,  Keep The Creative Alive
Life is a creative endeavor.

I think about the money game in the same way I regard football. My savings run up and down the field and, depending on the economy and the market, I win some points and lose some points. Clearly the 2008 recession created a long dry spell for my team. Indeed it has been a while since we registered on the scoreboard. That takes a toll on my optimism.

Speaking of football, however, I remember a crisp autumn day in 1968. I tuned my transistor radio to listen to the University of Michigan game. The Wolverines were battling the fearsome Buckeyes of Ohio State. I do not remember who won the game, but I distinctly remember the announcers talking about emotional momentum. It seems there is more to football than muscle and brawn. Football teams fall prey to collective optimism and/or discouragement.

And so it seems with the economy. When the lenders, investors, consumers, and employers lost a collective sense of confidence, the momentum shifted to an unseen opponent who carried the ball. As the scoreboard grew increasingly lopsided, our team’s heart grew heavy. We carried a sense that we might never reach the playoffs.

Sometimes creative thinking cowers in an atmosphere of fear and loss. Yet without our imaginations we are truly lost. When things get bad, we need every player to wear the creative helmet. We need imagination and a “yes” attitude to win. Giving up on your creative game makes no sense at all.

When the situation is out of your control, such as the economy, the quality of your life is still within your control. Consider how you can escape feeling oppressed. Find strategies to decompress. Give voice to the creative every day.

Writing helps your mind stay limber and open to unseen solutions. Your brain’s right hemisphere serves as your team’s fullback to help you find the hole in the opposition’s defensive line. Reflective and creative writing call on the right-brain to find patterns in complexity. This helps you find answers not available through per logic. Taking time to write a poem or a journal entry will clear your head. Your pen will shift the momentum. Touchdown!

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2007

Life Makes Sense Looking Backward

The skies unleashed a pounding rain this morning as I darted from my car to the gym. As I dried off in the locker room, I chatted with a friend who is writing a book. “It’s about surviving my husband’s service in Iraq,” she told me. “It is not easy, but the writing is healing. I hope it will help other wives.” I congratulated her courage and moved into my workout.

An hour later, when I left for the office, the storm had subsided. The sky was clearing. When the sun came out at noon, taking an umbrella to lunch seemed absurd, if not neurotic. Still an hour later, the storm devils stirred up another tempest, hammering me with sheets of frigid, slanting rain.

This weather is predictably unpredictable. It’s October in Boise. That means the weather will change as often as my daughter changes clothes. This evening, the setting sun illuminated the foothills, which were shrouded in dark clouds. Patches blue seemed to be chasing the gray out of town. The line between dark and light seemed clean, understandable . . . uncomplicated.

But life is not so clean. More often it is complex and confusing. People don’t always get along. We cannot even agree on the definition of bad weather. As it turns out, many Idahoans danced a rain dance in August and September begging the gods for rain to end a devastating season of wildfires.

Even as I tell you this story, my impressions of today’s storms and ominous clouds take on a different meaning. As the words tumble onto the page, I feel a growing appreciation for the bone-chilling squall that soaked me as I darted to the car after lunch. Remembering the drought, my definition of bad weather changes.

This is how personal writing transforms us. As my friend writes her story of her husband’s deployment, I know the story will help her make sense of her sacrifices. The “ah-ha” moment comes after the fact. As the philosopher Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Writing down what happened is the first step. Exploring how you felt during and after the event comes next. Standing back from those feelings offers new perspective. Unnoticed details and sidebars come forth. We see patterns as well as the missing pieces.

When I need a listening ear, writing helps me listen to myself. The melodrama of my adolescence is preserved on the pages of spiral-bound steno pads. Journals helped me walk through the joys and tribulations of motherhood, midlife, and divorce. Regardless of the weather, I’m hooked on this powerful self-help. If you aren’t keeping a journal, give it a try.

© Susan Reuling Furness - 2007