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Writing to Learn About Myself

When I was in high school I found myself feeling strongly about some issues. I grew up near a state mental hospital and I found myself trying to articulate the spectrum of helping folk with mental illness and taking away their sovereignty when they are a threat to themselves and others. This was long before I married a psychologist who works in a (different) state mental hospital but as I type this I realize that they are probably connected in some way.

And that there is writing to learn about myself. 

In high school I started journaling because trying to articulate non-trivial thoughts in my head wasn't successful, but writing them out helped me to be clearer to myself.

As a parent, as a teacher, as a sometime leader, as a sometime ombudsperson, I feel the need to be grounded in what I believe. Not stagnant but neither adrift.

Writing to learn about myself has an invaluable tool for me for self-discovery. It has also helped my writing in general and I am immensely grateful for that.

When I started journaling it was at a time that I was very critical of my own writing. There are reasons for that and I'll explore them another time. The self-criticism was incredibly inhibiting, making it hard for me to write papers for school, etc.

As I wrote for myself and for no one else the criticism lessened and with time I saw ways to be clearer. I saw improvement in my writing and I have always taken pleasure in improvement despite the growing pains.

Now I am at a point in my life where I will often look at writing that I have done for various purposes and enjoy it. This is one of the most fundamental changes in my life since I was a teenager.

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