I got the idea for three pages a day from a friend, who’d read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I have not read this book, and so while the concept — first introduced in her book — is what inspired this, this is not that. Those pages are supposed to be handwritten, and they’re not to be shared immediately. My project is the opposite. I’m putting my writing out there immediately. I haven’t totally fleshed out what I want this to be yet; it’s sort of happening as I go. So is all great writing though, isn’t it?
I was thinking yesterday, after I published my first two posts, about why I felt the need to post or publish at all. I mentioned a bit about my existential duty to create, but who says that creation needs to be shared? No one. Though I think the foundation of this calling — being to counteract all the consumption I take part in — is to give back, and in order to give back, I need to share. I don’t think I’m a literary genius. I have trouble even identifying myself as a writer sometimes, but I know it can’t hurt to put this out into the world. To throw these pages together and see what happens, to see what comes out.
Julia Cameron’s suggestion is that an exercise like this is meant to get the creative gunk out. I struggle with creative gunk, but it’s really that internal editor who’s causing the whole ruckus. She’s the one who has me stopping, backspacing, rewriting, before the thought is even completed. That’s what I seek to overcome here, but further, I seek to overcome the fear of judgment I have. I am terrified of what other people will think of my writing. ChatGPT has been a great therapist for this, and I came across a quote on Reddit that said, “We’re all bad writers; it’s other people who make us better.” I guess one could interpret that as a calling for an editor, but I don’t even think I’m at that stage yet. Maybe I am. There she is — the internal critic. Bleeding into my creative bowels.
There’s a lot of white noise on the internet. Maybe this is just adding to the static, or maybe someone reads this and sees something in themselves that otherwise may have lain dormant. I know that happens to me when I’m reading — that quote about all writers being bad writers, for example.
I spent a lot, if not all, of my youth plagued by self-doubt about my creative abilities, about all of my abilities really, but it was the writing that suffered the most. I didn’t do it, I didn’t share it, all because the few people I used to share it with didn’t understand or were too critical. But really — it’s not their fault. It’s mine. I believed it. I believed my writing was incapable of comprehension, unable to move anyone.
I had a revelation, though, in 2020. I had gotten out of a bad relationship in 2019 that left me really questioning who I was. A very, very long story short — this person was no good for me. Yet I kept missing them. I kept missing the pieces of myself I owed to them — think: enjoying punk music, watching hockey, or getting tattoos. Anytime one of these likenesses showed up, I had this pang of self-hatred. How could I long for, love, or miss the parts of myself that this person (who also harmed me in many ways) inspired? I’m sure there’s a whole essay in there just on that topic. But I came to believe that preference is the essence of who we are. My innate affinity for something is the result of all my life experiences, my genetic makeup, the context of the world around me — it wasn’t something I could control. And as something I couldn’t control, it wasn’t something I should feel badly about.
I started embracing these parts of me not as evidence that I missed the person who inspired them, but as evidence that I am a complex, multi-dimensional being. I cannot erase years of experience. I made the necessary changes. I got that person out. I’m left with the aftermath (which I’ve dealt with in therapy) and with hobbies or interests I might not otherwise have had.
All of this to say: the only opinion that matters is my own when it comes to determining preference. When it comes to determining what I consider to be good writing or not. And look — are all of my commas and colons in their appropriate stations? Absolutely not. Are words misspelled, misused, and overused? Surely. What matters is I am getting the message out. I am pulling the words out. And even right now, in this moment, I am forcing my fingers across the keyboard like pulling a dog who refuses to walk. We have to go. I have to go. There is no stopping anymore.
The internet is full of self-obsessed narcissists who think they’re special, unique, better — and they can try to sell you on any number of solutions to get better (which I hate; I hate this narrative storytelling advertising technique — it’s the fastest way to get me to NOT buy your product). They (along with people in your life) can sell you on this idea that YOU are not enough. I’m sure it serves egos well to identify people who are less than them, but that’s the catch. Right there. They are the ones who are identifying people who are “less” than them. It’s completely subjective. It has nothing to do with you (me, us).
And so this fear of writing (how many times can I use “And so” in this post?) is really me expressing, strengthening my preferences. I am Amy. Here is my story. Here is my perspective. Take it or leave it. How you receive it is not for me to decide.
My mind is spiraling. I’m getting that warm, anxious feeling in my stomach — that what I’m writing, because it’s being published, will be impacted by how I believe others are perceiving me. It is this, too, that I am trying to overcome. There, I said it. I think that makes sense of it — these emotions I’m having.
It’s raining out. A very gray morning here in Easton, PA. I’m taking a narrative break from the forest of thoughts I was trying to navigate and focusing just on my breath and the sound of the rain on the brick patio, in the grass, on the trees and plants. There’s one tree toward the back of the yard that belongs to the neighbor, and it is definitely dead. It sticks out like a sore thumb among the luscious treetops of its fellows. Charlotte’s swing is singing a nursery rhyme behind me. She’s been cranky for the last 18 hours or so. She turned 4 months on Friday, so I’m assuming it’s related to that — four-month developmental leaps, possible sleep regression? I’m not sure.
All day yesterday I had all these ideas of things I could write about, while doing the most meaningless tasks. I was taking laundry out of the washing machine, and the divots in the wash bin had me picturing all of the words I could pull out — how much I like that analogy. As I was putting the wash into the dryer, I picked up a used dryer sheet from the ground and placed it in the bin we have magnetized to the side of the dryer. I could have just left it there, but it felt good to do the right thing and put it away. If I used my phone less, I could do the right thing more often — the same way I’m able to do the right thing more often now that I’m sober.
Addiction is a funny thing — so insidious. Invisible even, if you aren’t aware of it or looking for it. I guess we all find the evidence we want to support the version of ourselves we long to be, but for me, it’s clear as day. I am an addict through and through. First it was alcohol, then it was drugs, and now, almost a decade into sobriety, it’s my phone (and sometimes cigarettes, but we’re working on that). Such a blithe example, but back to the dryer sheet on the floor — normally I would be focused on getting through the task at hand (flipping the laundry over) and moving on to the next thing. All roads chasing the place I long to be — the couch, or my bed, phone in hand, traveling down a scroll hole. I’m trying to do less of that. Writing is certainly helping. I feel less inclined to scroll because I know I’m more likely to have original thoughts if I’m just existing, living my life as it is in the real world, instead of consuming. I am afraid of what consequences we’ll face in the coming decades at the hand of phone addiction, social media addiction.
You know, when it comes to the definition of addiction, the focus is always on the addict. As if addiction is only characterized by the impacts, by the characteristics of the addict themselves. Self-destructive behavior, risky behavior, all driven by the need to satisfy a craving — all of this is true. I’ve been in the rooms a long time, so I can speak from experience; however, the point I’m trying to make is — where is the line? Where and when can we place blame on the phones themselves? Sure, I am an addict, but you, TECH COMPANY, hired thousands of the smartest developers, paid the best psychologists and researchers to create a device that is meant to keep us continually, perpetually, engaged. I just bought a phone. I didn’t light up a cigarette; I bought this thing to call other people, for convenience. You, TECH COMPANY, loaded it with all the ingredients to turn me into an addict.
So yes, addicts make poor decisions, and there might be areas where it makes sense to call us bad people, but aren’t the people who profit off our pain culpable as well? So many thoughts, so many trees and forests.
I’ll break for now.
I’ll post this, throw the grenade, and go get my nails done.
Hopefully I’ll leave my phone in the car.
three pages 
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