fill up an entire book with thoughts

I started a ‘diary’ to my son in March. I am fighting for custody for him. In this diary, I write down all that I have done to get him, how much I love and miss him, what he is like right now, and other tidbits. My point to all of this is 2 things. One, I want to keep an account of what I have done to fight for custody so that in the event I lose, my son can read how hard I tried. Two, I want an account of what my son was like at this age (4), and the memories we are sharing together. I plan on giving this to him when he is in his late teens. I wrote it in cursive so that if he did get a hold of it, he couldn’t read too early. I chose a beautiful diary from a Christian book store that has scriptures of encouragement on each page. I share my beliefs, prayers and thoughts. I hope that is means as much to him, someday, as it does to me.

i want to do this to see myself summed up in form of my thoughts, not previously considered. and ones i can’t quite express in words i hope it comes out okay, or in art/visual form.

This is coming along a lot slower than I anticipated.

I just bought the book, drew the cover, and wrote my first entry. If I can actually keep up with it, it really shouldn’t take that long to do.

I wish I could fill a book up with thoughts alone but I’m not so sure – I STILL keep trying to censor myself from things I don’t want to be caught thinking – even though I suppose lots of other people around the world do this too. What I DO do, is write down the more obvious thoughts that don’t seem to too hard to grasp if I said it out loud.

I have filled up quite a few rather large binders with morning pages, so I think that counts…

In March of last year (and the previous October), I dug out all of my “morning pages” – writing that you do in the morning (or you’re supposed to) to get any worries out of your head, to make room for anything good, and to clear out your mind for the rest of the day – I grabbed all of them and shredded them. It may sound silly, but it felt as though all of that negative energy was just stagnating there, so I wanted it out of the house, and it felt so good to destroy all of it.

I’m now thinking about doing this with a few journals that I’ve kept. I’ve almost finished up a large hardbound one that I received for my birthday, two years ago. At the time, I didn’t want to fill it up with anything negative, since it was so nice, but that didn’t work out, so I’m thinking about burning it soon… I think anything like that in the future, will be used for things such as gratitude lists, and to remember anything else that has been good – it can be too easy to forget the good, in all the negativity that occasionally piles up, or that’s associated with people and/or places.

One of these days, I’m also hoping to print up some pictures, and add them to the scrapbooks that have been sitting in my bedroom cupboard for years (also a birthday present). Some will be filled with pictures of family and friends, including pictures that my mother’s cousin found of some of our ancestors – maybe I can upload the scans to Flickr, and use one of their services to print them out in the form of a book… the rest will hopefully be used for pictures of the places I plan to visit, when I finally get to use my passport again, and get myself out of the country for a while. Greece, Italy, Hawaii, and hopefully other places on my 43places list, as well as making it back home to England. :)

Am currently participating in the embodiment livejournal community which is sort of like this. You have to make an entry ever day of the year even just a few words. I’m slipping up a bit I admit >< But I’ll try and catch up. I think I’m still censoring myself from my thoughts because I fear someone will try to read the book if they find it …

I have started a blog which I called Johan van der Merwe’s Thoughts. Now I will no longer need to write my thoughts on paper where everyone can read them. I wrote my first entry about my thoughts on atheism.

When it comes to expressing your thoughts, a blog is the way to go.

The problem with writing your thoughts on paper is that someone can read them and make fun of you or if they are very strange then send you to a mental assylum.

I now think it would be better to start a blog where I can write all my thoughts. This will stop the people I know from reading my thoughts because they won’t be able to trace them back to me.