In my mid twenties I took a very long trip. For nearly two years, I travelled around the world. I travelled rough; sleeping in cheap hotels and hostels, taking multi-day bus rides with the locals; the way you’re supposed to travel as a twenty-five year old.
Throughout that time I kept a blog for friends and family and a journal just for me. Every week or so I would find an internet cafe and write out a blog entry to my “followers”, often paying per minute as I did so. As I continued to write the entries, they became better and better, funnier and sharper to the people reading. They also became easier and easier to write. Towards the end, I could sit down at that computer and empty my mind into a coherent entry nearly as fast as I could type.
Likewise, for my journal, the entries took the same path. I wrote every single day in that journal, typically in the evening. What started off as a simple recounting of the day’s events, slowly grew. I asked myself questions in that book. I dug deeper into myself in that book. By writing things down, I was making myself happier.
The distinctive way that the rickshaw drivers in Kerala pulled their starter, the taste of fresh Acai berries in Brazil. Writing assured me that the little things, the memories that fade quickly, could live on. Words captured things that my photos did not.
When I was anxious or upset by something, I wrote it down and played with it. I poked it with statements and questions to myself. I played out scenarios, on paper. Me vs my adversary, me vs me. It was like working out a knot in my neck; a little piece of me would be released. The pen and page became a reliable way to do that. And when I got home from my travels, I returned to the ‘real world’ and I completely stopped writing.
Twelve years on. I’m married with two young boys. I have a career and a mortgage, problems that make those past anxieties feel trivial in hindsight. While working in an office tower downtown, I would go for walks at lunch to clear my head, turning ideas, both fact and fiction, anxiety or story, over and over in my mind. This can be a fun escape for a little while. Less so when the idea that you’re ruminating on isn’t a pleasant one.
It might be anxiety about a particular relationship or an upcoming deadline; it could be a million things. You can talk about it, which helps, but you can also write about it. This was what came back after more than a decade. A flashback to scribbling down notes in a Bolivian hotel or while bouncing along a dusty road in Kenya. This is what I used to do. I lived, I travelled and I wrote. Before the offices, before the kids, I wrote every evening. I forgot the load that it can carry.
I began writing again and have never (fully) stopped. I still write on paper from time to time, but the bulk of my entries are on the screen. I capture memories, I ask questions and I’m still working out the knots.