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To wash the dishes again is to live another day.
If you’re on Instagram, you’ve encountered trending audio. These are the songs, sounds, and voiceovers currently in vogue amongst reel creators. The concept of trending audio is not the most romantic thing in my book, but this medium can still resonate from time to time. In a recent example, a gentle voice speaks about the power of paper:
“If you want to feel more creatively fulfilled this year, there’s only one thing you really need to do: spend time with paper every day,” the narrator @aelfleda begins.
Taking this to heart might prompt you to immediately throw your phone down, the very thing summoning your return to analog creativity. But then you’d miss all of these internet people sharing their own paper creations on screen.
Beyond the reels of zine makers and sketch book flip throughs there is YouTube. Before I heard this trending audio, I’d already spent hours watching channels where people write in and talk about their notebooks. Lots of these are centered around planning and productivity, which can be insightful. Someone wearing a simple black t-shirt and a grown out manicure stands in a sunny room next to a plant to tell you how they get shit done. Others consist of disembodied hands and soft voices showing you how and why they write things down the way they do.
I have to imagine that this sounds dull to many, but to me it is heaven. And in the bosom of 62,000 Megan Rhiannon subscribers, 30,000 Hobonichi SubReddit members, and Instagram accounts like Martina Calvi, I have found those who know my craving for the luxury of pen to paper.
The pleasure of life on paper is twofold: a grounding ritual in the moment, and a memory in the future. There is a tactile delight in noticing the fine differences between types of stationery, cutting out images for a collage, feeling the tip of a pen roll across paper with a permanent mark. Each paper is a declaration of the present to be received in the future.
The Ritual
In the realm of YouTube and Reddit, much of the discourse centers on design, tools, and purpose. People connect over fountain pens and washi tape. They share their methods for planning and keeping a day log. As someone who is always trying to feel more in control of time, I cannot look away from this content.
And who among us is not constantly reaching for a metaphorical inbox zero? Dishes, emails, ambitions, dreams… it doesn’t matter the content. If you’re lucky, it just keeps piling up. To wash the dishes again is to live another day.
Accepting this is key to contentment. When I spoke to ADHD coach Tracy Otsuka for my article on time blindness with Well+Good, I learned the value of shortening the daily task list. Doing so reduces pressure and makes you feel more accomplished, but it means acknowledging there will always be things left for tomorrow.
I take this approach in my 2024 planner, a chic and charming Hobonichi Techo. In the past, my planners have been sloppy and chaotic, full of absentminded scrawls and lost ideas. In hindsight I wonder whether that energy was transferring to the way my days felt. Now that I’ve made my planner neat and beautiful, my days feel a touch different. The attention I give to my penmanship and layout somehow translates to a mindfulness that I apply throughout day. I check in with myself often. I write shorter tasks lists and keep a done list of everything else. Everything has a place and a purpose in the day and on the page.
The Memory
Journaling is a sloppier process for me, but essential for my sense of presence both now and later. I am a documentarian of my life and times. I’m telling the only story that is mine to tell. No detail is too mundane or tedious.
I have kept a journal since the dawn of time. When I was 8 or so, I received a Veggie Tales diary as a gift. I took it with me on my first plane ride and wrote my first journal entry:
This is one of many in a box of notebooks stored in our attic. I’ve heard of people throwing away their journals both habitually and impulsively. I tossed one once because I didn’t want to keep the memories inside of it. But as heavy as it was, I wish I had now.
Old journals remind me of the multitudes of experiences, phases, feelings. That all things must pass. No matter how I felt on one page, turn ahead a few and things look different.
Looking back on them is an act of self-awareness. I practice nostalgia because knowing myself now requires knowing myself then. (And because it’s cute, embarrassing, amusing, and can provide material for things like stand-up routines, memoirs, and blackmail.)
Journals, scrapbooks, planners, sketchbooks—they all record the realness of a moment. So I preach the trending audio of my algorithm:
“Throw all your worries down on paper.
Make lists. Lists of ideas. Lists of people you want to spend time with. Lists of exhibitions you want to see.
Send love letters.
Turn the pages of books and write notes in the margins with a soft pencil. Rewrite your favorite stories.
Make mind maps and plans, scrap them, then start all over again.
Use up the empty spaces in previously discarded notebooks.
Wake up from drowsy sleep and write down your dreams.
Cut out paper flowers.
Record what happened today, and you will see progress tomorrow.
Free the ideas that are itching to get out.
And spend time with paper.”
- Ælfleda Clackson
I shared today's Disco Diaries because I want everyone to know what a fine writer you are and to share in your fascinating internal landscape.