Celine Nguyen on Substack
substack.com
Celine Nguyen on Substack
Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write down what you think of yourself, of your wife, of the Turkish War, of Goethe, of Fonk’s trial, of the Last Judgement, of your superiors – and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your senses
... See moreThis is what the best journals look like. They aren’t for the reader. They are for the writer. To slow the mind down. To wage peace with oneself. Journaling is a way to ask tough questions: Where am I standing in my own way?
Mill is trying to figure out what he believes is true, and what he can stand for, and how to live. But the way he does it is, at first glance, the opposite of feeling: he is constructing a system of thought, a philosophy. He is hunting down the contradictions in his intuitions and his thoughts; he insists on finding ways of thinking that allow him
... See moreAnne’s diary is also instructive about how writing, for anyone, for everyone, for you and for me, can normalize the abnormal and feed the spirit, whether during exceptional moments of history or just ordinary moments of everyday life.