I’ve been doing morning pages on and off since last year. But it was not until recently that I found myself actually looking forward to writing in the morning before my day starts. What is it? Well, it’s just a practice of writing down a stream of consciousness. It must be three pages long. And it needs to be done first thing in the morning. The simplified way to explain it? It’s just a brain dump. And you don’t reread it. I’m not too strict with it. I had to change it a little bit to make it work for me.

What are the changes that I made? I do it after I feed my dogs, and sometimes, I do it during a more appropriate time. I am not a morning person in general. So waking up any earlier than 6 AM is tough. And I have duties in the morning. It amazes me how people can wake up any earlier than that. But I try to block my time so that I can do it before noon. So at least it is still morning when I do it.

Instead of committing to three pages, I blocked an hour every morning to write my pages. There are days that I write more than three pages, sometimes just two pages. And that is fine. As long as I write for an hour. When I started this last year, I found that the three-page commitment was just not working out for me and that was the main reason why I kept on dropping it. The three pages placed too much pressure on me and I did not want to do it at all. There were days that I just had nothing to write, and I didn’t find writing “I don’t know what to write” just to fill the page enticing. So, I tweaked it and I found it more productive for me. I know that this might just be in my head, but my brain (or my being really) found committing to an hour block more doable than committing to three pages. Three pages is daunting. An hour block is more palatable.

Other than those two things, I pretty much do it like how everyone else is doing it. It took me a bit to be okay with losing a train of thought when my brain decided to throw me a different one altogether. It took a bit of practice to let go of a thought because my brain wanted to unravel a new one. I’m pretty sure if – IF – I reread my morning journal I would be reading some incomplete thoughts. But I won’t be rereading them. That is the point of a brain dump. You dump the noise out of your brain to make room for new ones – more productive ones. I’ve realized that some of the noise that I dump on paper are ideas or things that I want to do so it helps to have a highlighter on hand to mark them to flesh out later. But to be honest, I don’t even highlight them. Right after the hour, I just write them on a piece of paper and stick it in my EDC.

What do I write about? Whatever is in my brain at that time. I have days where my brain would put me on a roller coaster and there would be a lot of self-reflection, and there are days where I find that my brain just wants me to write about fried chicken. Sometimes my writing was focused on feelings, and sometimes, it was focused on complaints. And that’s okay. As long as I write all of them. If a new thought comes to mind, I drop the other one and pull on the string of thoughts on the new one. It definitely took me a bit to be okay with this. It takes practice for sure.

One thing that I found so fulfilling about this exercise is the fact that I don’t have to be perfect. As a perfectionist, doing morning pages made me feel free. It’s been liberating for sure. I use a lined 8.5×11 journal. I know I am more inclined to use the journal if I like the supplies I use. So I did buy a nice-ish notebook and I use a gel pen for writing. But you can use anything. If 8.5×11 is too much, just use an A5 notebook.

I don’t even wear my glasses when I do this. The pages are blurry to me, and I just use the blur of the lines on the page as a guide on where to write. My penmanship is barely legible. And I don’t mind! Like I said, it’s a very freeing practice. And I think that’s what I really enjoy about this. I’m not writing it for anyone else. It’s for me. And I don’t have to reread either. It’s a write-it-down-and-forget kind of journaling. But as I said, sometimes my brain would be throwing ideas in there and since I’ve written it down, it’s easier to recall later to flesh it out.

How long have I been doing this nonstop? Two months on paper. I started last year, I used my freewrite machine for it. But I found that I get distracted with editing it. I was too aware of my writing. But since I decided to just do it on paper with a pen, I found that it was easier for me to just write continuously. It was pretty interesting trying to keep up with my brain. So there were a lot of unfinished thoughts, most likely mistakes, and there were definitely erasures. Would I keep doing it? Oh for sure. As I said, the practice is freeing. And I have not felt this free with writing in such a long time.