author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

This past week, I realized something else about Morning Pages and why they're useful to me. Put briefly: They're a safe place to indulge uncertainties. Which is to say, I can natter on to myself about how unsure I am, how worried I am, how doubtful I feel, how much I despair. And it's OK, because Morning Pages are not a performance. They're not going to be graded. They aren't the space where I have to be certain, sure, confident, perfect-perfect-perfect. They're a safe place to admit to insecurities.

I haven't readily given myself permission to do that. I'm insecure like woah, but I know I shouldn't be. I'm not allowed to be. So it was sort of an epiphany this past week to realize that it's OK to write down things like "I'm just writing the same thing over and over and over. Is it really doing me any good?" or "Renaming the protagonist of the snow-glue-apocalypse story after the kid in Dr. Seuss's 'Ooblek' story isn't clever, you know." or "It's late. I overslept by a bunch. Is it even worth trying to get the day started at this hour?" or even "I've been trying all weekend not to think about the City of Boulder 'failure to file' tax liability assessment¹ that arrived Friday because I can't do anything about it until offices open later today, but it keeps popping up in my mind and making me feel sick to my stomach, and I really didn't need that on bout day² or while preparing to leave town, as though it weren't hard enough combining bout day with travel prep weekend, right?!"

It's OK to admit to doubts like that on pages no one will read, in a space of time during which I'm not expected to produce.

It's a good thing to do. At the very least, it can't hurt. It's not like forcing myself to relive unpleasant memories on the page, which can sometimes be usefully cathartic but is just as likely to be a needlessly agonizing experience that poisons my mental state for the rest of my day as though the awful incident had only just now happened, and that also poisons the Morning Pages process itself with painful associations that will make me reluctant to do Morning Pages tomorrow, and that ultimately delays a much-needed healing process by ripping the emotional wound wide open to Day 1 status. (This is why I'm less likely to force myself to journal incidents I don't want to think about, and more likely instead to just write, "I'm thinking about something unhappy and unfair and infuriating that happened yesterday. I don't want to be thinking about it. Here is what I would rather be thinking about instead...")

Unlike that, this is harmless. And it's freeing to be able to admit that I'm imperfect. It's freeing to just let myself be imperfect. I'm in a backstage sort of space, where it's OK to allowing myself time for the pre-show worries and nervous breakdowns. And in doing so, I can work through why I'm full of doubts and come up with plans for working through or around the doubts. Having done that, it's more likely I'll actually leave those doubts backstage (on the page) and be able to perform better despite them on the stage (over the course of the rest of my day).

Realizing that it's OK to wibble on the page was also a realization that I needed to have that realization, if that's not too recursive. I just hadn't been acutely aware of how much of my day-to-day stress was coming from the combination of being uncertain and not allowing myself those uncertainties, and therefore not admitting to those uncertainties, even to myself.

So I guess that's the takeaway here: We have to put on a good act for everyone else; why make our jobs harder by trying to fool ourselves too?

¹It's OK, it's all good. "Your actual tax due for those periods, even if it was zero, replaces your liability assessed here." But I did have to take an extra trip downtown, that I didn't really have time for on OMG I GET ON A TRAIN TONIGHT Monday, in order to have a smiling, friendly tax specialist in the municipal building reassure me to my face that "You are OK now." Totally worth it, though. If I'd just mailed my written note, I'd still be worrying, and I'd keep on worrying all through my travel. That face-to-face reassurance was two grand worth of a weight off my mind. (back)

²Bout day went great. No one got injured, neither during the mix-up bout nor during the "B-Team Showdown" as the announcer kept referring to our game. My Bombshells won, and I personally was responsible for two power jams in jam #2 in the first period. (Since the latest rules change, penalties are only 30 seconds long, so a single skater can go to the penalty box multiple times in a single jam.) I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of that. Whenever I feel ashamed of the stupid shit I did--"Fleur, if you come off your line one more time, I'm benching you," ARGH--I remember that, yes, while there are things I still need to work on, I've improved enough to be aware enough and quick enough on my feet to run back and cause the jammer to cut the track. Twice. During my first time out on the track that night. OK, so, maybe I get a Destruction of Pack Major penalty of my own one of those times. But still. Also, our opposing team, the Pikes Peak Derby Dames Slamazons, were a lot of fun to bout against and to party with after. There is proof of this on the internet. I'm not sure what we were doing in that photo. Pretending to be puppies? (back)