Returning to the morning pages felt like coming back to a friend this morning.
I did ten-minute mediation with Sam Harris's app before this. There was half a sentence that lingered: there's nothing to hold on to. There's no reason to hold on to anything.
The daily routine has morphed into one I never expected. After dinner, these days, I quickly drifted to sleep. I would be in bed before ten. I rose before six. It amuses me. I never thought I could do this. I never thought I'd be this. It feels like being another person.
Remember when we were in high school? We didn't want to sleep as we were so hungry for the world. we thought sleep'd be a waste of time. The night was so delicious. I devoured the hours of the night, reading, writing (shit poetry).
In my twenties in even as recent as a few years ago in my early thirties, I still tried to hold on to the night as much as I could. There was always some energy left to spend, some desire yet to chase and appease.
And now.
Allow things to happen! I wrote on my board in my study.
And if nothing does, it is also alright. There is nothing to hold on to. When we're gone, we are gone. Spending enough time on that thought, I sometimes find it even beautiful. The meaningless of it all. It's alright.
Yesterday, I bought into a belief - well, a theory. My bursts of energy, lack of perseverance, plenty of mood swings may come from an undiagnosed ADHD. Dang asked: is it helpful to know that? Let's keep a note here: I am undiagnosed; this is from a Guardian article I read. Yes, and no. It is, at the very least, helpful to know that not I AM wrong. Not that there's something particularly wrong about how I have navigated through things - and been occasionally be a failure - to my own judgment, compared to some others. It's good to feel that my efforts are not dismissed, are in a way acknowledged. If I have not turned out to be the person I aspired to be, it is not for a complete lack of trying, but for having been dealt some different cards.
So that is that. That is just one and themselves.
I am going to start and make my students write The Morning Pages with me today. Both class. I will call it "Conversations with [NAME]". How cheesy. I think it will do them good. If this sustains as a habit, they will spend less time losing ways and finding ways again as they grow into adulthood.