It does not matter what you write, start writing...

“A good memory is no match for a bad pen nib.”

‘The palest ink is more reliable than the most powerful memory.’[1]

In my daily work, many times people will come to me and ask; “what can I do to change x?” as if in the course of 45 mi

nutes life could be solved and reshaped. The reality is that life takes time to be reshaped, and issues take attention and effort to be resolved. So, drawing from the above popular proverb, I always invite people to start keeping a journal. At first they are surprised and, in a way reluctant to do it. This is usually because they are concerned about the safety of their thoughts or the time it will take for them to do it. That, however, is the point! They will express their reluctance, my reply will be “if you want to know what you can do to change, you have to be aware of what you are doing, and you have to be able to review and see what you have done during a day, a week, a month.” The problem here is that people expect solutions without effort, but our lives require time and effort in order to be fulfilled. So it is no wonder that we are reluctant to sit down and spend some time putting our thoughts together and feeling uncomfortable when we see what we desire to make better. Therefore, we have to be able to understand that if we want to have the chance to review our life, it will be helpful to keep track of what we are doing or at least the most important events, feelings, happenings of our life… and writing them down is a pretty good exercise to do so. Writing them will help you to:

1. Clarify your thoughts: once the day is over you will be looking in retrospective and, probably, with the same intensity of feelings, passion, anger or joy at what happened during the day. However, you will be able to record them in a calmer way.
2.  Relax: whenever you are in a situation of anger for example, you can see how the first pen strokes can be in disarray and indented on the paper, and how as you keep writing they become more ordered and light.
3. Think what is next: you can write what just happened and what you would like to happen in the future. Maybe after some days you may revisit that page and totally change your mind, but at least you can see the progression of your feelings.

So, it does not matter what you write, start writing and it will help you to understand its purpose!

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[1] http://ask.metafilter.com/247533/Is-this-really-an-ancient-Chinese-proverb

Where Should I Start Writing my Mind…

Are you expecting me to keep a blog? No way…

For many years I have refused to keep a blog, and I have been averse to the idea of even opening one. But I have been required to have one if I want to complete the work of my class. Yes, I am a newbie in writing blogs, and I don’t have the even most minimal idea of how to start a blog. Nevertheless, if we consider that journaling or diary writing is the father of blogging, then I can consider myself an expert.

I started keeping a journal when I was thirteen years old, and I was pretty faithful to it. A page will be filled with the happenings of my life and things that I considered important every day. You could find any topic and any feeling on it, but in order to read it you would have to read Spanish, English and Tagalog. It recounted my life in the different places where I have lived, the relationships I formed with people of different cultures and languages, and of course my joys and sorrows. I did keep my journaling habit till the age of 37, when for a good reason I decided to stop writing, and I decided to burn my journals, many of them! It was the time I was working in the Philippines and it was my time to move back to the USA. I decided to burn all those stories written in those journals because I did not want them to get lost in the middle of my moving back to this country. It was a tough decision, but the best choice, since I was shipping my books, and I did not want my life scattered throughout the world in case the books were lost.

And here we are, I have to restart my writing habit, which by coincidence match my restarting the journal-keeping habit. It has not been easy since I have no idea about what I want to write. The journal is more for my personal keeping; recounting my important moments. However, the blog is for everyone to read. The journal is somehow permanent. In other words, if it is not by some external force, it will be there for all the time. As to the blogging posts, I have no idea how long they will exist, or if by mistake they will disappear. I mean, just think of platforms like friendster, or myspace; they were not blogging platforms per se, but they were promising social media outlets. yet they dissolved after few years of their rising. It is also important to think that when we write journals, many times it is for ourselves and not for others. So it is very different from blogging which by its nature requires a writing style which stands alone even if it belongs to particular segment. My question is then, how can I appeal to an audience who is accustomed to the ephemeral nature of social media technologies with something that is as personal and full of passion for me as an everyday recounting of things that are important to me, namely journal or blog? How can I help people to put in their minds that even if things in social media are ephemeral, they have to be truthful as they are in ordinary ways of communication, and personal relationships?

I am then confronted with the decision to write either with the desire to make a difference, or to write with the desire to get lots of likes and followers, but be gone with the wind. So my hope is that I will write to contribute with realistic, to the point, and short blogs which could impact the life of my readers as well as mine.

Therefore, bring it on! Where is the piece of paper and the pencil, or better to say where should I start writing my mind…

To know more about the author visit:

     https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandrorodriguez29

You could also read:

     * 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You? - article

     * How to Start a Blog - video