Hi Friends-
How is your brain today? Mine has been a little on the fritz all week and not functioning like it "normally" does for the better part of a year.
It's been interesting to learn how to operate in a new way amidst this fog. So far I find that my executive functioning is less sharp, but my ability to do creative tasks is, in many ways, much freer.
I've always thought high executive function was a double-edged sword: Yes, it can help you plan and execute with aplomb, but it can also help you imagine everything that could possibly go wrong in incredibly precise detail. (A cherished pastime of mine that I would like to leave, well, in the past.)
The upshot is, in certain ways, I feel more "myself" than ever, and in others, I feel less myself than ever. But which one is the real self? 🤔
As Christine Downing writes in her wonderful book, The Goddess: "The truth that will give us back a lost part of ourselves is also the one that takes away a self to which we have been deeply attached."
Perhaps I am still in the process of detaching from some of my old ways of selfing. (⬅️ As I write this sentence it strikes me as a solid epithet for my tombstone.)
Scroll on for an essay on the quiet power of journaling, a reframing of how we can hold despair, and ideas on "navigating by aliveness."
Also: Today is the last day to get the early-bird discount on my creative incubator KILN: Chrysalis Edition. See details below.
Sending warmth,
Jocelyn
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KILN: Chrysalis Edition
June 17 - August 19, 2025
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An 8-week program for reconnecting with your creative self, moving through challenging transitions, and ideating & co-creating in community.
Learn more about KILN & register.
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Use coupon code "butterfly30" to save $30 on full tuition through May 30th.
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What Are You Noticing?
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Wherein I talk about my journaling practice, why it's so anchoring in unsteady times, and how to get started.
In this time of great uncertainty and change, I have been thinking about anchors. What are the activities, energies, and relationships that help me stay grounded and steady in the storm?
One essential anchor practice for me is journaling.
I recently organized all of my journals from the past 25+ years by date and timespan so that I can easily dip back into an era and see what was afoot.
My practice has by no means been entirely consistent over the years. A single journal from my early twenties might span 5 or 6 years, while others cover 1 to 2 years, and some just a few months.
The past two years, in particular, have been a time of incredibly deep self-investigation and transformation for me and, as I catalogued my notebooks, I was shocked to see that I'd filled up ten journals since the start of 2023.
Over the last few months, I've been slowly reviewing those journals and taking stock of all that has unfolded.
This is, for me, the most powerful aspect of cultivating a journaling practice: To have a record of what has happened so that I can see — and remember — what I have moved through, what has changed, and how I am growing.
It is easily one of the most powerful practices that I engage with to increase my self-awareness, for a few reasons:
- Journaling moves energy. Putting events, feelings, and ideas into words or images and engaging in the physical act of writing them down is a way of moving and transmuting energy. I always feel different (and generally better) after I have gone through this process.
- Journaling is a way to remember. In a culture that is constantly trying to shove more (dis)information down our throats, it is a powerful practice to tune out the external voices and tune deeply into yourself — to jot down what you're noticing, to document what you're feeling, to create space for your intuition, to remember what lights you up. Journaling is an excellent aide-memoire in this way.
- Journaling is a tool for self-reflection. To paraphrase a wise friend of mine: It is not enough to see yourself, you need to see yourself reflected. One of the most important aspects of a journaling practice is making a ritual of revisiting your writing. This is when you see yourself reflected — you see the challenging things that you wrestled with and overcame, you see the questions you asked that started to invite in more clarity, and you see all the ways you have grown and how far you have come.
To be clear, I'm not necessarily talking about a diaristic kind of journaling. My practice is not simply scribbling about my feelings and/or what happened in my day.
Sure, when something particularly dramatic or challenging or emotional happens, I do write about it to process those emotions and move the energy. But a lot of the content is simply notes on life:
- Questions I'm asking
- Ideas that are arising
- Quotations that move me
- Things I'm noticing in therapy or healing work
- Notes from courses or readings or tarot spreads or other meditative activities
- Insights or aha moments that I want to remember
If I had to sum it up, I would say that my journaling practice is simply answering the question: What are you noticing? again and again and again.
And through that noticing — as well as making a regular practice of reviewing what I've written — a deeper awareness naturally arises. Effortlessly.
So if you could use an "effortless anchor" in this moment, I would invite you to consider a light journaling practice.
Just sit down a few times a week and ask yourself the question: What am I noticing? And take notes.
It's that easy.
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A few quotations that reverberated as I reviewed my past two years of journals:
"Love is life force." —June Jordan
"Patience is a kind of hospitality." —Francis Weller
"Humor is built on the relief of recognizing how difficult things are." —Sasha Ravitch
"Whatever we create ritual for, we need not live as melodrama." —Caroline Casey
"Healing is about the constant adaptation and creativity necessary to tune and retune our nervous system to Source." —John Beaulieu
"Everything you imagine is an investment." —Anonymous
"The aim of all human striving is to establish an all-embracing harmony with one's environment, to be able to love in peace." —Michael Balint
"Happiness never comes through answers. It only comes when we're so tired of answers that we just decide to live the questions fully." —Richard Rudd
"It takes a lot of courage to be who you are, and I pray that you never wish to be anyone else." —The Ancestors
"Forgiveness unlocks time." —Anonymous
LINK ABOUT IT
In defense of despair. A beautiful piece from Hanif Abdurraqib: "I remain more committed to honesty than I do to optimism."
How Silicon Valley got rich. And how everyone else can get rich too. A fascinating essay on the redistribution of wealth. I am very much enjoying watching Elle Griffin write her book We Should Own the Economy in public.
Radiolab's Lulu Miller shares a bunch of amazing facts about the scrappiest, most adaptable, shapeshifter of the animal world: coyotes.
Painter Jack Whitten made it his life's mission to give abstraction soul. "I believe that there are sounds we have not heard," he once said. "I believe that there are colors we have not seen. And I believe that there are feelings yet to be felt."
Navigating by aliveness. A nice reflection from Oliver Burkeman: "An excellent question to ask yourself – when you're facing a tough decision or wondering if you're on the right track – is: "Does this feel like it's taking me in the direction of greater aliveness?"
We endlessly muse on the future of AI, but what inventions are we not expecting?
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SHOUT-OUTS:
The artwork is: Camilla Garofano, who is based in Empoli, Italy.
Link ideas from: Austin Kleon and The Audacity.
You can support me & my work by: Sharing this newsletter with someone, signing up for my creative incubator KILN, or taking my course on heart-centered productivity, RESET.
Website: jkg.co
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