I stopped writing in my journal recently. Stopped cold. I convinced myself that I could dictate instead, to try and be 2x more productive, maybe 3x. Why sit at a table or desk and use a pen on paper when I can do things while dictating my morning pages1 Morning pages are an idea credited to Julia Cameron that many of you reading this already know about. I’m skeptical that writers for eons have not been practicing strategies that echo what Cameron asserts are the key aspects of morning pages, but she’s grabbed it and monetized it and I’m a believer. Morning pages, also, assume that you are in a position in your life that you can wake up and ignore everything but yourself and fill three sides of a notebook page with writing “before your ego’s deficiencies are in place,” which, according to Cameron, is when the magic happens. Of course, one page is not enough because you may still be in the cobwebs, and don’t you go over three pages because you want to avoid “self-involvement and narcissism.”, or any other note-taking for that matter? If I put in my headphones, and connect to a dictation app, I could walk the dogs, empty the dishwasher, fold laundry, drive – all while writing! It’s very Seth to think that I could transform a tried-and-true writing practice, perhaps the bastion of them all, and one that I have believed and participated in for years (stops and starts notwithstanding). Take morning pages, which has spawned the seeds of my best work and taken me places that, upon waking that particular day, I never knew I could go – and just change it, optimize it, make it more efficient. Case in point: I’m addicted to Waze. I’ll put on fucking Waze when I’m driving a half mile to the gas station, or to Oberlin, OH. If I’ve been to a place 467 times and taken the same route all 467 times, I’ll still use Waze. Why? Because what if Waze tells me, one day, that there’s a faster way that can get me where I’m going in 7 minutes instead of 8? I can use that minute. I need all the minutes.
*
Speaking of driving, my drive to work is almost thirty minutes each way, now. I take this drive, twice daily, five times a week, due to a construction project that is occurring at our permanent house (we are in a rental in a kind-of-nearby-suburb while the hammers sling and the contractors make excuse after excuse. They are costing me a lot, but mostly: time). I am confident writing that sentence in the present tense—a project that is taking place—because it is a construction project that was estimated at 9-12 months and is now hitting month 15 16 17. A construction project that people question. My wife Elizabeth and I have friends employing pre-retirement strategies and simplifying their lives while we empty our savings to build our coffin. I say that as a joke but it’s true. But we are aligned here, Elizabeth and me. We want the place where we’re going to spend the rest of our days to be exactly as we desire. No shortcuts. If it’s ever finished, I am leaving this home in one of three ways: feet first, in a straitjacket, or foreclosure. We’re not that old, but we plan to live out our days here, and that’s exciting. The house is the pinnacle of my constant search for permanence.
The coffin permanent house is only an eleven-minute drive to my office, where I now work each day after a post-Covid relocation of my law firm’s office from the Chicago Loop to my hometown of Evanston. Our impermanent house is sixteen minutes from our coffin in the other direction. So that’s about thirty minutes, every morning and every evening, where I must pay attention, which is very different from my old trips downtown on the Metra2Chicago’s commuter train is called the Metra., where I had the option of doing, or just being3 List of things I would do on the Metra: Work, read, write, listen to music, have a tall boy, stare wistfully out the window, be excited, be tired, be nervous, be terrified, be angry, be happy, be uninterrupted.. In 2020 I stopped taking the Metra because, pandemic. I moved the firm to Evanston. I gained and lost a lot that year, like we all did. Anyone reading this has stories to tell about 2020 and its aftermath. I lost my Metra ride.
But thirty minutes’ drive is a long time to listen to Spotify or sports radio or NPR or just daydream, so I started dictating my morning pages while driving, just me and Siri. This practice helped me not “skip” morning pages. Skipping morning pages is dangerous for me, based on where I’ve been before in my writing life.
Initially, this shift in process was productive and exciting. I had cracked a code. I was stealing time! I created much of this book while I drove back-and-forth to work. Dictating is phenomenal for quick bursts and spontaneous ideas, and for running at the mouth for a while. Running at the mouth for a while can produce some real good shit. You can look at the transcript later and pick and push and pull things around. I laugh when my transcribed stream of consciousness is interrupted by me yelling at some idiot driver—Your signal is on, your signal is ON sir!—or when I stop at the Walgreens to grab a prescription in the drive thru and forget to turn off the microphone: Pick up for Kaplan, Jack . . . no, there is not an insurance problem. . . I cleared this up with the pharmacist yesterday. . . yes yesterday. . . I assure you . . . please double check. . . again please. . . thank you. . . unreal. . . no I don’t want to earn rewards point for my purchase, I would just like to go . . . Where was I. . . damn.
*
When I am writing morning pages as prescribed, it’s a habit that grounds me. Its iterative quality links one day with the next, creates a conduit within my life that is always moving in a direction. Every morning. Open the journal. Grab the pen. Left elbow on the table. Left thumb on the left temple, left hand on the forehead. Lean in. Go.
The solidarity of morning pages (and any other journaling) is magic. That’s irreplaceable. The pen and the paper make every word permanent, or at least as permanent as burnable paper can be, which makes you keep going because there is nothing to do about it once the words hit the page. Sure, I can cross out a word or sentence or rip a page out and crumple it and throw it across the room in the can4Shooting crumpled paper hoops is one of my superpowers. I’m a career 85% shooter from anywhere., or, I suppose, I could use a pencil and spend time erasing5There is no wrong way to do morning pages, so says Julia Cameron, you simply write down whatever comes to mind, but one critical rule is no editing or rereading. Hence: no erasing., but why? Or, put another way: who cares?
I care. There’s a reason why that word, idea, cluster, sentence, paragraph, list, came from my brain to the page. That reason may be readily available to me, but it might not be. Either way, in morning pages, it’s got to stay. It must. That’s one of the rules. The writing down of the word, idea, cluster, sentence, paragraph, list; it’s the writing that makes it permanent.
*
So, it’s not like I’ve had a bad stretch. With the dictating, I’ve produced. But I wonder: what have I missed? What did the microphone not pick up? What was I on the edge of discovering right before that delivery truck double parked on the two-lane street—What are you dooooing you Amazon Asshole!? So, while the efficiency has worked, ideas were certainly getting lost. And I can’t have that. No lost ideas. I don’t have time for lost ideas.
So, while I may miss this practice in the name of productivity, I’ve determined, effective immediately, that I can no longer dictate my morning pages.
*
Things have happened in my life to me, my family, my friends, and loved ones that are harsh. Nasty. Painful. Cruel. Unforgiving. But they happened and they cannot be deleted. The truth is, however, in life, I’m a deleter. I’ll grapple over things on the inside for me to see (or delete) and on the outside let my worst self out. As I search for permanence –this illusion that teases me – I realize that when you delete, you lose the experience. You lose the ability to learn from it, suffer because of it, question it, hug it, stab it, celebrate it, or bury it. I think of all the words and thoughts and actions and emotions and tears and smiles I’ve lost out of from deleting.
*
I’m putting the finishing touches on this essay on a plane. My over ear headphones play from a curated collection of 2700 of my favorite songs of all time that I have on a Spotify playlist called “Songs I Like.” It’s one of my favorite things, “Songs I Like.” With each keystroke, my computer bounces on the unsteady tray table.
My tastes are eclectic, and I love to mix it all up. Give me Eminem before Neil Young opposite C&C Music Factory after Prince on top of Wilco near Smashing Pumpkins next to Fleetwood Mac besides 21 Savage adjacent to The White Stripes underneath Gucci Mane plus Coltrane amid Post Malone behind De La Soul. Just good. That’s all I want to hear when I’m driving, working, working out, writing, gardening6We haven’t even gotten into my gardening. Gardening is permanence., walking, tanning, being. Yo La Tengo until The Cure.
As I’m writing on this plane with my elbows pressed into my ribs, the information that works its way out of my brain continues to astound me, and the serendipity even more so. As I was polishing this section of the essay, two songs popped in my queue back-to-back. Post Malone’s “Feeling Whitney” is a melodic acoustic track that explores themes of loneliness, heartbreak, and personal struggles. It’s not parallel to my life in any particular way. I’m not a drug addict or suicidal and I’ve never had 80 beers on a Tuesday night and I mostly don’t smoke. The stops and starts in the first twenty seconds of the song resonate, and the pained way he7Post, Post Malone, Mr. Malone? sings does too. I also love how it stands completely apart from the rest of his oeuvre. Right after: Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s “Teach Your Children.”
The song conveys a universal truth (though its meaning is about war) and serves as a clarion call. It encourages parents to teach their children kindness and to impart the reasons behind our values. In the second verse, it urges children to remind their parents of these teachings, preventing them from forgetting and becoming complacent. You can’t make this shit up.
That’s what writing words does for me. It keeps me from forgetting and being complacent. And it’s the words on the page that do it; the ink on the paper. The rounding of the vowels and the straight lines of the consonants travel electric straight from my brain to the page.
*
And in the morning, head fresh off my pillow full of worlds, the words come. Sometimes with ease, occasionally with laughter, often with pain. But they come, and there is no substitute.
Here, at 4:45am, my hair is mussed and my eyes crunch as they open and close from sleep nuggets and old contacts that are suctioned to my eyeballs. The t-shirt I slept in is damp because I am old. My hip gnarls at me from too much standing yesterday in the 3rd base coaching box. My head is in my hands. I slide my journal out of my bag and open it to the first blank pages.
The pen feels so good in my hand.
—
Seth Kaplan is a writer and attorney in Evanston, Illinois. This essay is excerpted from Permanent Home: A Story of Fatherhood, Ambition, and a Life with Objects, a memoir-in-essays manuscript that considers existential permanence through the lens of a regular middle-aged guy attempting to secure footing in a world that continues to knock him off balance. Permanent Home is currently out for query. When not lawyering and writing, Seth is learning to empty nest with his wife Elizabeth, coaching baseball, practicing yoga, and raising tomatoes. Read more of his work at www.sethkaplanwriter.com and follow him on Instagram @sethkaplanwriter.
