Y'know when you're doing this big multi-step DIY project that involves doing many things and getting parts and tools and materials and you're holding all this stuff in your head and you notice how much of a big noisy scrungly mess it is up there, all the thoughts and worries and tasks overlapping each other like spaghetti all going in different directions, and you grumble "This is ridiculous, a guy can't get anything done with all that yammering going on," so you start up the computer and the text editor and write out what's going on up there, not because you don't know what's going on but just because thoughts go wibblywoobly like gummy worms and writing goes left to right in a straight line and to turn your oh-I-need-to-do-this-and-that thinkings into a ah-I-need-to-do-this-THEN-that shaped Plan you need to untangle the spaghetti and make it go in the long straight writing-shaped hole

Do you ever think of that like brushing your brain

Like oh no my brain's all tangled I've gotta spend a few minutes giving it a nice brush and make it purr

@ifixcoinops

I use a pen and paper. I'll stream-of-consciousness some stuff until the brain settles down.

I've never thought of it as brushing my brain but that's pretty good.

@401matthall @ifixcoinops Yyyyyup. This is a big part of why I still do Morning Pages even after the rest of "The Artist's Way" and "The Right to Write" is irritating me to the point of giving away my copies of Julia Cameron's books. The first page always starts off with some form of AUUUGH THE DAY IS SCARY AND FULL OF DREAD AND I JUST CAN'T but by the last page it's "OK, I've identified at least small task X how about we do that, that's not so scary, right?"