A turn toward functional on the road to contentment
(a housekeeping note) Therapeutic Journaling #6
Back to therapeutic journaling after a few days of being busy with the Waterford Democratic Committee Newsletter … which was definitely therapeutic in its way, and I’m glad I got it done. Of course now, a week later, I need to follow up with the things I implied I would do to promote the committee.
But first, as something of a housekeeping note, I would expect my upcoming journaling to include more “functional” writing, which like the newsletter has a more solid goal than simply relieving stress and giving me a chance to dwell on happy, or at on low-stress and more or less contented, thoughts.
To explain, I really need to write up the research I did in Guatemala between October 26 and November 15, when I interviewed about 20 people about their experience of having a close family member migrating to the United States … or in one case about the “business” of sending migrants to the United States.
In truth, I should be flogged for not having done more than I have since returning to the US. My only excuse is that I was too distracted by concerns with my local environment, and worries about the world sliding into fascism, and even – rare for me – a few social obligations that preoccupied me to the point that I didn’t feel like I could responsibly sit down to the keyboard.
But at this point, the need to record my interviews and discoveries in narrative form in an attempt to discover journalistic (in the vein of ‘possible publications’) or scholarly value has been moved to the front burner. So I would expect my therapeutic journaling to kind of focus on stories I heard while in Guatemala. Because not only do I think the content of the interviews extremely interesting and important, in truth they have solidly anchored to the place and people that feel more like “home” and “family” to me than any other place or other people anywhere in the world.
And besides that, this should be a pleasant chore I can do … calmly.