Captain's Log, Stardate: 79495.3
Is this newsletter secretly a journal?
Before we start, let me preface by saying that I am not a trekker in case you got sent here by accident looking for a Star Trek-related newsletter.1
Hello everyone. I want to continue writing about the things that I would like to do this year. Here is the list again:
Improve my handwriting.
Journal more.
Correspond more by email and post.
Learn some calligraphy with Jennifer.
Take more pictures.
Move more.
Read more.
Cook more.
Clean more.
Last week, I wrote about improving my handwriting, specifically working on my cursive writing and learning Getty-Dubay Italic. The cursive writing practice continues. I have been taking about 90-95% of my work and personal notes in cursive. Which is considerably more cursive than I have written in decades. Every so often, I will start writing in manuscript, but I usually catch myself rather quickly. I can read what I write, and I am slowly picking up speed. This is going well. Last week, I did the first exercise pages for learning Getty-Dubay Italic, and it cramped my hand up something awful, so I haven’t done any this week. I’ll try holding my pencil more loosely and see how that goes. Perhaps I’ll do half an exercise or even a quarter of one and see if that prevents me from cramping. I don’t have a time limit on learning this new way of writing, so I can take it slowly. After last week’s post, a few people have told me that my cursive is nice, so maybe I don’t need to learn a whole new style of writing. That said, I’ve already bought a workbook, so I may as well give it a go.2
Before I begin this week’s topic, I would like to take a little time to brag on myself. My inbox is currently zero. I don’t mean my email inbox—that is compulsively kept at zero at all times. I check it often and immediately read or delete every message. I cannot abide unread emails or text messages.3 When I say that my inbox is empty, I mean that the literal shoe box that I keep my unread mail in is empty for the first time in at least two years.
Behold:
I forgot to take a “before” picture, but it was full up to bustin’, multi-leveled, and had flying buttresses to hold all the post at bay. It was a fright. Here is the almost full grocery bag of recyclable mail that was in this box:
There were two reasons that I cleaned out my inbox last week:
Jennifer had cleaned out hers recently, and that inspired me to clean out mine.
I needed a break from writing last week’s blog post, and I thought that I would do something relatively productive instead of getting on social media or the internet at large.
I thought that I would just open a few pieces, and then I would get back to writing. Instead, I sat there for more than an hour and a half, opening, sorting, and then recycling several pounds of mail. I estimate that there were between two and three hundred pieces in total. Of this number, there were maybe fifteen mail pieces that were actually relevant to my current life. Those still need filed away, but the gigantor pile is no more. I have to approach opening and sorting out physical mail with the same fervor that I do electronic mail. Now that I have it at inbox zero, I will have a better time keeping up with this—that’s the plan at least.
I posed a question in the subtitle of this post: “Is this newsletter secretly a journal?” To tell you the truth, I’m not certain of that answer. Do I use this blog/newsletter as a place to store my random thoughts? Sometimes. Do I use it as a place to process how I interact with the world? Again, sometimes. Supposing I wrote more regularly, say once or twice a week, could it fill the role that a journal is for most people? Maybe so. But do I want to physically write a journal as well? A guarded yes. I don’t think that I have the wherewithal to write a daily journal or diary. But I do like the idea of having a combination commonplace book/journal/notebook in my back pocket at all times to capture fleeting thoughts, help sort out said thoughts, write down interesting quotes or ideas that I encounter while reading or listening to books or other media, and also to help me keep track of what I want to do with my time. I feel like a good portion of my free time is spent spinning my wheels trying to decide what to do with the precious hours that aren’t spent at work or commuting. The percentage of time spent on this activity is truly shocking. What looks like daydreaming or absentminded woolgathering from the outside is really a complex interplay of competing desires, urges, tasks, impulses, and drives that become so bewildering to me that they stop me from making forward progress in pretty much any area. I can’t do something fun because I haven’t done my chores. I should do chores, but because they have no novelty to them, I feel like I have to do something fun. But I can’t do that fun thing because I have chores to do. I end up giving up on both and just end up doomscrolling social media sites. In my opinion doomscrolling is the absolute worst use of my time. All it does is angry up the blood and fill me with dread about the world we are living in. I know that I cannot ignore what is happening, but simmering in impotent rage sure isn’t helping me make the world a better place on a micro or macro level. Where does journaling enter into this? Perhaps it will help me tidy up my thoughts and help impel me to action of some sort, maybe that action is just to keep the house more tidy. Maybe it will give me the freedom from racing thoughts if I chase them down and corral them with pen and paper. Am I suggesting that organizing my thoughts and living space could help me to face the chaos and entropy that is consuming our world? I suppose I am. All I know is that giving into chaos and entropy is certainly not the way—even if it is what I usually default to. So, is this newsletter secretly a journal? Not in its present form, but will it become more like one in the future? Perhaps. I am in no way suggesting that I am a reporter or other professional journalist, but I do think that it is important that I record as much as I can about what is happening in this world and how it affects me and the people that I care about in my personal life and in the wider world. Unfortunately for us, we are living in interesting times.
Next time we will talk about my desire to correspond more by email and post. Especially by post.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@tooearlyoldtoolatesmart.com
Follow me on Instagram: @germynickels
Follow me on TikTok: germynickels
Follow me on Bluesky Social: @jeremydnichols.bsky.social
My PayPal: PayPal for Jeremy Nichols
Discord server: Too Late Smart Newsletter Server
It would not be the first time that I bought gear to learn a new skill or hyperfocus and then abandoned it. Witness the entirety of this newsletter from day one.
My sister Jessica has over 100,000 unopened emails. One time she texted me a screenshot showing that. I darn near puked.