{"id":84536,"date":"2014-11-17T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=84536"},"modified":"2014-11-16T17:58:34","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T23:58:34","slug":"the-beauty-of-morning-pages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=84536","title":{"rendered":"The Beauty of Morning Pages"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Katherine Kimball Adelberg, Senior Assistant,\u00a0INALJ Michigan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Beauty of Morning Pages<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Katherine<\/a>Recently I undertook an experiment. My wonderful but demanding job was draining my creative\u00a0resources. I found myself spending evenings on the couch, scrolling through Buzzfeed,\u00a0Instagram, or the aww<\/a> subreddit. Each of these have their place, especially at the end of a long\u00a0day, but I was never really moving on from what happened at work. Suffering from a classic\u00a0case of burnout, I stopped finding time for my interests and hobbies. My husband suggested I\u00a0take a look at the book The Artist\u2019s Way<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Artist\u2019s Way is a 12 week course in \u201cdiscovering and recovering your creative self\u201d. This\u00a0sounded like exactly what I wanted (who doesn\u2019t want to be more creative?), but I needed to\u00a0overcome some initial reluctance. Like many librarians, I sometimes find it challenging to stop\u00a0serving others and focus on myself. Other INALJ articles have addressed the topic of burnout<\/a>\u00a0and self-care<\/a>; check the archives<\/a> for even more!<\/p>\n

Once I finally made the commitment, I discovered my new favorite habit: morning pages.<\/p>\n

Morning pages are one of the foundational exercises of The Artist\u2019s Way. The very first thing I\u00a0do on weekday mornings is write (or type, to be more accurate) a single page. I\u2019m not keeping\u00a0a diary or a journal; these pages are not meant to be kept. They\u2019re stream-of-consciousness\u00a0ramblings without any concern for grammar or goals. The point of the pages is to reconnect\u00a0with myself every morning and write whatever comes out. The knowledge that I\u2019m writing\u00a0something that no one will ever read is strangely liberating.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing daily for a month, and here are some of the benefits:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m developing a more personal relationship with writing. I\u2019ve always been good at writing\u00a0papers, and more recently, responses to FCC Notices of Proposed Rulemaking. Writing every\u00a0day has given me space to explore writing in an informal and emotional way. I\u2019ll always be a\u00a0non-fiction person, but writing every day will make me a better advocate. Think of how often\u00a0you communicate in writing every day; why not hone that technique?<\/p>\n

Insecurity is contagious, and these pages are a great place to park my insecurities. The past\u00a0few months have been very difficult at work; we lost our fearless leader<\/a> and other staff have\u00a0been out with life-threatening illnesses. In a small department, these losses are felt acutely.\u00a0These pages gave me a place to record my worries without them dominating my daily life.<\/p>\n

As a corollary, recording things that scared me made them less terrifying. Working through\u00a0my stream-of-consciousness early-morning logic brought some light to places that needed it.\u00a0Once I named my fears, they held less power over me. This was true for both small things, like\u00a0dreaming that my supervisor had been kidnapped by a mob boss, and for larger issues, such as\u00a0nervousness before a conference presentation.<\/p>\n

The Artist\u2019s Way includes many other elements, not all of which I embrace as wholeheartedly as\u00a0the morning pages. However, I can\u2019t recommend them enough! Here are a few things to keep\u00a0in mind if you decide to adopt this practice as your own:<\/p>\n

\u25cf Don\u2019t re-read or correct as you go. Just record the first thing that comes to mind. No\u00a0one else will read this; there\u2019s no need to correct someone\u2019s misspelled name, even if\u00a0it\u2019s your own.<\/p>\n

\u25cf Try it for at least 2 weeks. I experienced a lull after the first few days when I couldn\u2019t\u00a0think of anything to write. Ideas will<\/em> spring to mind as you\u2019re typing \u201cI can\u2019t think of\u00a0anything to write about…\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u25cf If you take notes by doodling or drawing, try drawing your morning pages instead of\u00a0writing. You could also hand write them, which the book recommends.<\/p>\n

\u25cf Use this as a springboard to blog for us<\/a>! INALJ is always looking for fresh perspectives.\u00a0Topics will surface and you\u2019ll develop your own voice as you work through the morning\u00a0pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Katherine Kimball Adelberg, Senior Assistant,\u00a0INALJ Michigan The Beauty of Morning Pages Recently I undertook an experiment. My wonderful but demanding job was draining my creative\u00a0resources. I found myself spending evenings on the couch, scrolling through Buzzfeed,\u00a0Instagram, or the aww subreddit. Each of these have their place, especially at the end of a long\u00a0day, but…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":56971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,5582,6088,3638,5921,6676,6675,5084],"class_list":["post-84536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-creativity","tag-habitual-writing","tag-inalj-michigan","tag-katherine-kimball-adelberg","tag-morning-pages","tag-the-artists-way","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Katherine-Kimball-Adelberg.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-lZu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}