#9 Journey Journal - First Thoughts

As the first week went by, my mind wasn’t really used to writing for 10 minutes nonstop, but as the days passed I got used to doing the exercise. It wasn’t until the 6^th or 7^th entry that my mind stopped thinking and just poured all that came to me in those ten minutes of, I may say, relaxation. Never before had I done any sort of activity similar to this one, in which I took ten minutes from my day to just sit down and write about what was going through my mind, which is most certainly what’s going on in my life.

It was a bit strange for me to write personal things in a place in which I had to hand in to my professor when I finished my 40 entries. Once I got over the fact that my professor wasn’t going to read it (I hoped so), I even included this crazy thought I had in some of the entries, I got more comfortable with the idea of the exercise, which was based on first thoughts.

The objectives of the activity were set since the first entry:

·    Keep your hands moving

·    Don’t cross out

·    Don’t worry about spelling, grammar or punctuation

·    Don’t think. Don’t get logical.

·    Go for the jugular

From the objectives mentioned above I can say that I followed each and every one, especially the one that incites us to go for the jugular. Once I got over the fact that nobody would read my entries my mind made sure to use the ten minutes to pour out the things that were causing me some troubles and sort of resolved them for me through the course of the minutes left once I wrote them in the journal. I am pretty sure once I get my Journey Journal back I will finish the few pages left of it and continue the exercise, at least a couple of times a week. This is because once I finished writing I felt as if the things I wrote might one day help me or even make me remember what was going on in my life that exact day, and probably help me if I were going through the same problems as those days.  The Life Compasses had a similar effect because if I look back at them I can see how I felt those days in various factors: spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically, and the causes of why I felt that way. In conclusion, this activity served as an effective way of permanently recording my internal journey, full of thoughts, problems and solutions, for future consideration.