JOURNALING

I began journaling again. I’ve been out of the habit for many years. One thing that has helped is the non-physical healing work I’ve been practicing on my sore hands and fingers. I do believe I will succeed at healing this nasty trigger-finger and nerve damage pain I’ve been suffering from. Improving my attitude toward the limitation my pain causes is what I’m really practicing. And it seems to be working. I’ve been doing more writing—the literal kind of writing. The old-fashioned kind. The kind where you actually hold a pen to a piece of paper and move it for a long time, until you take a break and find that you’ve penned an entire page or two in no time. That’s something I haven’t undertaken in years because I found that typing on my computer was much faster and easier for my very sore hands and fingers. I still have to be careful with how much I do with my hands, but I’ve found that keeping them still and stiff is detrimental at this point. (Years of medical transcription work—and I worked intensely—plus diabetes has caused me this damage).

It feels good to be journaling again. I am the type of person who gets very absorbed in a project. I get very intense about what I do. That's just me. I used to find it odd that people always pointed out how intense of a person I am, but I’m beginning to see what they mean.

My journals…

I’ve created a journal solely for my daily well being and as a way to log the medications and supplements I’ve been taking, and any symptoms like a headache or mood changes or whatever. A friend recommended the book The Edge Effect by Eric Braverman, which led me to the supplements. Supplements weren’t something I used to put much faith in, but after learning a little bit about brain neurotransmitters and how those chemicals work in the body and how the supplements work, it makes sense. And anything that has a formula that makes sense to me is worth paying attention to. If I can utilize it, I like it. So thus the supplements and thus the log book/journal for them. So far so good.

I’ve also created another journal solely for daily thoughts that pop up. This is the journal I have to “cheat” on a little. I have so many thoughts, feelings, and emotions that journaling them all is impossible and would cause more nerve damage than good, so I found that if I begin to journal and get a hand cramp, I then finish the entry on my computer. If I stay orderly about it, it will work. I note in the journal that I am finishing the entry on the computer, and then in the computer I note the date that I’m continuing from. I’ll have to then print out the computer entries and insert them into the journal if I want to be neat and tidy about keeping things in order. This will all work and be fun until I become sloppy about it. So far so good.

And I have another journal solely for my spiritual thoughts, practices, techniques, and insights that have to do with anything I’m currently working on or experiencing. I guess I could call it my spiritual journey journal. I cheat on this one a lot too, finding it faster and easier to type out my notes rather than hand write.

One of the supplements I’m taking is melatonin, and I’ve heard it helps with dream recall as well. It does seem to help in that department. Since I’ve been taking it I have remembered more dreams than usual. I think I will start a dream journal and write down my dreams again. I used to do that every day when I was a teenager, and I was able to remember the most vivid dreams back then. That was a time when I first became interested in OBEs and lucid dreams.

Anyway, I was surprised to find myself enjoying journaling again.