On Journaling Seven Things on a Dark Morning by Ashley C. Shannon

On Journaling Five Things Seven Things on a Dark Morning(1)

1. Is it five because five is an odd number? The middle of ten? It’s a circle. Five steps close enough will bring you back to the beginning, back to the start. A life lived. Beginning, middle, end. But won’t seven do that too? How about nine? But seven is full and complete. Six days of forward motion with a day of rest at the end. 

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2. Yesterday, I wrote from unresolved history. I wrote the things that get stuck in my head. The scratched things and dented things and full of peeling paint things. They were precisely what I did not want to write about. They make my stomach churn and my heart 100 pounds. They halt my writing. Even if they happened long ago, they happily unravel and show threads of themselves every day. No matter how much I blink, they are still there, waiting to pounce in the rearview mirror. 

But as I take them out and write about them, they feel less heavy. Their hold on me grows weaker. Suddenly, I can write about other things. They are a clog. And with them out, other thoughts fly to me. 

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3. When I was young, I used to fly kites with my aunt and uncle. The prairie was the ideal place—no trees, no electric lines, just oceans of sky and grass and the occasional cactus in the semi-arid space. I’m not sure how many times we flew kites, but there are other cousins in my memories. Perhaps we flew them around holidays. Was it after Thanksgiving? Was it warm December days? 

Although there were people with me, the wind is the focal point of my memory. The wind swirls around me as the kite dips and dives. I must pull my coat tight to keep my heat in. With the wind comes kite height. The deafening sound of the blasts tells me that I am alone in the world but that there is much to hold on to, much height to gain with my kite. As I clasp tight to the kite string, I see my aunt and uncle encouraging me to bring in the kite or let it go higher.   

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4. Is it true that you can write yourself out of a funk? Julia Cameron wrote that she goes to the paper to find happiness, but in the writing, she is happy (2). 

I imagine King David, the psalmist, also composed in the morning. Many of his cries for help mention the morning. His Psalm 142:8 greets me as I sit down to write. It says, “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” NIV

For me, writing is the act. The movement. The sliding of one thought onto the next. Letting the ink glide out. Opening the gate. Allowing whatever’s sulking to come forth. Giving the flutter of an idea space to explore. 

Or perhaps it’s just saying no to everything else on the to-do list. Not right now. I need to think. I need to write.  

I don’t know what I feel until I write it out. 

I don’t know why I feel that way until I’ve explored it on a page. 

(Why does this make me feel so unlike everyone else walking in the world, doing adult things in a confident and focused manner?)

When I know what I feel, then I can control my actions. I can predict and guard my steps. I know what to offer at the altar of “let it go.” 

And, like David, I give it to God. 

***

5. Have you ever immersed yourself in water? As a kid, I used to lie at the bottom of our outdoor pool and look up. On holiday last week, alone in the pool, I found myself doing it again. The sun danced with the ripples of water. The waves skewed the light. It was another world. A world beyond reality, ripe for imaginative minds—what used to be and maybe, if I remember right, can be again. 

***

6. My computer glows, coffee is cold. The sun hasn’t crept above our forest yet, but the clock tells me I woke up too late. I don’t have time for this. The to-do list has already started without me. I have nothing to give, nothing to write. I am empty.  

Tape peels from a picture I pasted to the wall. 

I don’t want to write the things that hurt. The things that empty my lungs of breath. I need to ignore those parts. Push forward. Make progress. But it’s what shows up. So I sit and stare.

Where is the beauty and the light? 

 ***

7. “Really, my life is privileged.” 

Whenever I read a piece full of grumblings and complaints, the writer qualifies his or her thoughts with this: my problems aren’t really problems. 

Because of modern technology, we know the horrors of war and unpredictability and famine. We can read history books and see images that far outstrip our own. And yet . . .  right here, in this moment, I struggle. I don’t write. The energy fades. I cannot get over what’s waiting for me—the memories that hold at the edge of my pen. 

But I know what I must do. I must write myself through. 

As I write myself through the dark morning hours, the sun creeps up. Its first rays of the day hit my face. 

I look up.

1). Writing down five things in the morning is based on author Summer Brennan’s five things essay.  

2). Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life (NY: Jeremey P Tarcher/Putnam, 1998.), p. 128.

Ashley C. Shannon is a wife, mother, and writer living in the middle of the United States. You can find her logging her adventures with writing, motherhood, and faith on IG @ashley_c_shannon or on Substack.