Daily Journaling

At this point I have to be careful that I am patient enough to not try to say everything in one long sentence. I am usually like a “bull at the gate” and harbour some weird belief that as soon as I think about something everyone else around me will be able to see what I am seeing as clearly as I do.

There are a couple of fundamental actions that I have done since I was diagnosed with cancer, that have created a strong foundation to build upon.

The first one that I will share now is my powerful habit of daily journalling. 

I have a long history of writing my thoughts down in diaries, on scraps of paper, in letters and online but I have never been consistent. 

On what would have been my Mum’s 94th birthday, May 22 2020 I started writing a journal. 

I’m not 100% certain where the inspiration came from but it may have been prompted by a podcast by a guy named Tim Ferris. I vaguely recall listening to him speak about a habit of getting up each morning and writing whatever came into his head, journalling to get his thoughts into perspective.

As of this writing, I have been doing this religiously almost every day for well over a year now. 

Between you and me, journalling is a very therapeutic activity from my personal experience and perspective. I never know what I am going to write about or what will inspire me to go in a certain direction or line of thought. Some mornings it might be simply be based on a feeling or an emotion. The words might be inspired by a discussion, something that happened the day before, the fleeting remnants of a dream or a documentary that we watched on TV. You get the picture? It’s like when you get the munchies, you start with something in your mouth and end up somewhere totally unexpected.

Writing has become a form of self analysis or a variant of meditation for me. On some mornings I just write about the comings and goings of life and on others I have major philosophical moments where I have profound epiphanies about myself and life. Then there are the in between moments where I just sort of “have a conversation with myself”. I call this morning ritual “Defrag Blues” because it defragments the thoughts, feelings, observations and experiences that I carry around in my mind.

It is a bit like giving my mind a bath.

Fortunately I had begun this practise about 6 months before I discovered that I had cancer. Journalling has been cathartic. It has allowed me to explore my fears, questions, feelings about death, infinity, the joy of life, strategies … the list goes on.

Here’s a small excerpt from my journal dated November 29, 2020.

I still feel like some sort of observer as opposed to being a full blown participant. Maybe that’s a good place to be. Having a bit of distance between myself and my body could be a good thing. I still firmly see myself as being somewhat seperate to my body and even my mind but I’m not kidding myself that I’m responsible for the whole kit and caboodle and what is happening to me.

Reassuringly I am still very optimistic.

I call it being “pragmatically philosophical and optimistic denial”. 

Here is another blog post that I wrote in early October 2020. 6 weeks before I found out about the cancer. Maybe I knew something or maybe I was just exploring death a bit more objectively than I had in the past.

“I want to die happy on a sunny day with blue skies and a nice gentle breeze that gently embraces my body and carries the sweet scent of nature. 

I want the date of my death to be sometime after February 5, 2052 and I want to be very aware of the transition between the state of existing as this version of myself and whatever I am beyond. I want to be surrounded by the people I love and I want to be very aware of their presence. And maybe I would like some of my favourite music playing in the backdrop, even a bit louder than it should be. On top of all of this I would like to be at my home, surrounded by “my stuff” which I will have clean, tidy and looking great.

I don’t want the people close to me to be sad. I want them to say to each other “What a great transition that was. What a great life he lived. He seems to know what’s going on and he seems to be happy about it.”

And when this is all over the thing I would like the most, the thing that would really blow my mind is for me to be aware that I have just moved out of my body, that it has transpired and that I am no longer that version of myself. 

That I am ME.

This is something that I had never really clearly thought about before in terms of how I want things to be although it is an inevitable day that will be a very, very important one for me.

My intention in writing this is not to be morbid and the circumstances that I have laid out may not come to pass but what I have written is what I would like.

I do know that I am shocked by random unplanned deaths, they seem so inauspicious. I sometimes think about the person waking up that morning potentially unaware that this is the day that their life will end.

Death happens every day to hundreds of thousands of people although for most of those days I am not aware of it unless I read about it in a digital news report or I hear about it from a friend.

Having said that on the other side of the pendulum hundreds of thousands of new lives come into existence every day. Many more than those that have ended. 

Like most everything about life this is a miracle. It is all just one big majestic miracle with no real purpose apart from what we all create as individuals and as a group and as humankind.

It is the way of this planet we live on and it works to forward the species of mankind. The new people inherit the culture, technology, knowledge, history, memories and habits, good and bad of those who have came before.

This is what we all should be thinking about because this is the gift that we offer those who inherit the fruits of our lives.”

And here is a little sentence that I wrote in January 2021 after I had started having Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.

“God would be pleased with me.

Here I was in my hyperbaric oxygen chamber sucking in pure oxygen in my hyperbaric chamber and I opened up YouTube and found a live concert by Dhafer Youseff recorded in Turkey in 2013. I watched and listened, I sucked in the oxygen and I smiled and wanted to yell out to anyone who could hear that they had to also watch it and share the joy I was experiencing.“

There are literally thousands of words in my journals and blog posts and while it’s quite enlightening to look back on how I was feeling at different stages of this journey the simple act of writing itself was so therapeutic and (as a therapy) it is free. 

I would highly recommend this practise of keeping a journal to absolutely anyone but especially to those of you who are working to cure yourself of cancer or for that matter any chronic illness. For me personally the act of journalling has been both enlightening and unburdening. 

Give journalling a chance.

You are welcome to read some of the entries from my blog at www.garycollier.com.au click on “Defrag Blues”.