Morning Pages, Beneficial Even if Not Done as Prescribed?

I’ve been writing morning pages for about two years. Not so consistently at first. I had never really journaled before that point, so it was all a really new experience for me, and the consistency part wasn’t my strong suit at first. I have found them to be very helpful though in time, in much the way Julia Cameron intended them to be: they’ve helped quiet all the negative voices swirling in my head, or at least slowed the spin. They’ve helped me get more focused on things, and able to hear my inner creative voice better. They’ve given me space to vent and question, organize and strategize, and overall helped me get my life in better order. But the one thing that I’m questioning, well the two things, is that I haven’t done them exactly as The Artist’s Way puts out for them to be done. I don’t necessarily write them first thing in the morning (although I do tend to write them at the start of my workday), and I don’t hand write them either, I type them on my computer in Word.

I know, I know. I’m not doing them as they’re meant to be done. I won’t get the greatest benefit from doing them. I’m not getting that fresh viewpoint before the rest of the day gets in the way. I’m not getting that slightly subconscious view that you have when you first wake up, before the reality of the day truly gets underway. On the other hand, I have found them to be helpful in similar though different ways. I have found them very beneficial in getting rid of those negative voices that can get going in the morning and then continue to swirl around your head all day. I find when this happens, I get very little done that day because I’m so busy defending myself against those voices. Like literally, and I’ve found this more so since I’m working from home because of COVID, I’ll sit at my desk and have arguments with myself, well with those negative voices. I waste SO MUCH TIME doing this. And by the end of the day, I’m exhausted and frustrated, and still have everything from that day left to do the next day, and I haven’t accomplished anything with my self-arguments. My morning pages, though, have helped me identify whose voices they are, and have been able to censure them, and quiet them. They still come up every once in a while, now, but not nearly as fierce, nor do they stay as long. I have also sometimes used the pages as a break between my 9-5 job work and my blog work. So, at the start of the day, I’ll get right to work on my job stuff, bypassing my pages; and then when I’m ready to start working on my blog stuff, I write my morning pages then. I find it definitely helps clear my head from all the nonsense of the day and puts me in the mood to write. Of course, perhaps at that point they become just pages, and not necessarily morning pages. 

Also, I’m willing to admit, I type my pages into a word doc, instead of writing them longhand with a pen and paper. There have been studies done that show there are more neurons firing when you write by hand versus typing onto a keyboard; and therefore, it makes sense that you’d get more out of it by hand-writing your morning pages. I can totally appreciate that, but my feeling is you get more out of it by writing your morning pages at all versus not writing them at all. Yes, this probably sounds a bit snarky. And I’m sorry I don’t mean for it too. And perhaps at some point in the future I’ll be more inclined to sit a hand write out my pages, and when I do I’ll probably be taken even further along on my life adventure. But for now, I really am getting quite a bit out of them even of it is by means of a laptop keyboard. 

And even though I’m not writing my morning pages as described, I’m definitely getting a lot of benefit out of it. For starters, I created this blog. And I’m actually posting to it on a fairly consistent basis! For quite a while I’ve been wanting to do something that as creative, that I could make money from, possibly replace my job with, but for the life of me I couldn’t see what that would look like. Once the morning pages took care of all the swirling negative voices in my head, and it was quiet enough for me to hear myself (my real self), I was able to conceive of this blog, and go through the steps to get it set up and running. Also, I think the process of silencing those negative voices was the start of me doing some serious shadow work (I’ll link to my post about that once it’s written). And, the pages quieted my mind enough that I could start thinking in complete sentences again. And it was funny, because I didn’t realize it was happening until I went to hand write my pages. (A little back story, when I first started the pages, I tried to do them as prescribed, first thing in the morning, and with pen and paper. Well, I wasn’t so fully awake at that point in the morning, and I wasn’t exactly holding the pen well and couldn’t exactly focus on the page. I also found that I couldn’t write as fast as the thoughts were swirling. It was like trying to take notes in class and keep up with the professor, but only getting half the first sentence down and realizing the professor was already three sentences further along. Probably, I was supposed to wake up a bit more, but anyway.) So, I tried that a couple of mornings, and then quickly switched to on the computer first thing once I sat down at my desk to work. But there was this one morning, after I had been typing my pages for a while, when my computer was doing an upgrade that took like 10-20 minutes, so while I waited, I decided to write my pages long hand. And the amazing thing was, I was able to keep up with my thoughts! So the whirling dervish that had been in my head before had calmed down and slowed to the point, that I was writing in complete coherent thoughts. That was probably at least two years ago, and it was profound enough that I still remember it.

So, in answer to my original question at the top of this post, yes, I do think the Morning Pages can be beneficial even if not done exactly as Julia Cameron recommends. You’ll definitely get profound, long-lasting change, and improvements. Something I would recommend to anyone looking to add to their self-care rituals. This was my first step in getting back in touch with myself, and I recommend it as a first step in creating your own Potted Oasis!

All images courtesy of Julia Cameron’s Facebook page