Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen:
Tramp Passing Through a Sleeping Village (1902)

"I still have mentors, but none better than the one I found lurking near the end of my journaling pencil."

As my fortieth birthday approached, my life grew increasingly complicated. I had not willed this change. It just seemed to visit me unbidden. Fortunately, helpers emerged as if somehow deliberately called to assist. Powerful teachers just seemed to find me and I entered into a fresh phase of learning, of living. Almost everything in my life would have to crumble before I would emerge on whatever passed for the other side, but the shift was never nearly as clear-cut or dichotomous as that. It first felt like a descent from my achievements long before it seemed anything like an improvement. I later learned that this challenge had long been considered routine, nominally labeled Mid-Life Crisis. The reality of the experience far overshadowed the seemingly benign name we'd assigned to it. In  his Divine Comedy, Dante described it: "In the middle of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost."

I was merely on the edge of learning my most profound life lessons thus far. Had I understood even one percent of what I would face over the following twenty years, I would have likely been frozen there, absolutely incapable of moving forward. As it was, I became an intermittent. Where I had been reliable, I became distracted. Where I had felt confident, I felt scared. Where I had comfortably ignored large swaths of my life, I began to enquire in considerable earnest. I acquired a therapist. I frequented my bookstore's Self-Help section. I became a seeker.

I had little idea what I was seeking, just that I was actively looking. I felt remarkably enlightened given my disoriented state, for a seeker focuses upon their future more than their present. They might stand neck-deep in excrement while fondly anticipating what seems sure to follow. Nothing's certain, though, but it would be a while before the lesson clarifying how certainty most often serves as The Problem would be presented. I needed a guide, and I found no shortage of them. I didn't yet fully understand then that every guide proves situationally helpful. None prove universal except, perhaps, the one accompanying one into the wilderness in the first place. I would learn by painstaking and sometimes painful experiences that I had been the guide I'd sought, but I would have to be taught how to use myself to much advantage in that role. I would be teaching myself.

Somewhere in that swirl, I was introduced to journaling. I'd never kept a diary. My handwriting was so poor that I could not always reconstruct what I'd attempted to capture when I scribbled. I persisted, encouraged by teachers, trusted colleagues, and my therapist. I learned that journaling could slow down my experience and somehow capture significant images I often missed when just moving through without so deliberately observing. It seldom mattered what I would choose to journal about. Synchronicity or something similar ensured that whatever I attempted to capture might gain significance upon later review or, often, while in the middle of the very act of capturing my impression. Other than my songwriting, this might have been my first conscious experience of iAlogue. I would go on to TalkMyselfThrough those foundational life changes. Yes, I would survive, though not intact, thank Heavens.

I learned by teaching myself when I had no real idea where I might find adequate wisdom or knowledge to teach myself anything. My life itself became a template for itself, the pattern-making source of transforming insights. I reflect now that had I not been actively reflecting with my journaling; I would have most certainly gone sleepwalking into my future, with who knows what kind of results? The journaling now seems a great and essential gift that had been missing for all of my previous life, for it helped me make sense when my other senses failed me. It helped me see what my unassisted eyes would never have noticed. My journals were personal, of course, not written for anyone else's edification, though I often referenced them when proposing some concept or idea in my professional life. They became absolutely foundational. Learning how to TalkMyselfThrough proved essential.

I sometimes forget just how important that little habit proved to be. In my workshops, I'd include a blank journal book in the participant material in recognition that if real learning were going to happen, the student would inescapably need to become their own teacher. They would need to learn to talk to themselves and to listen. The writing down in the journal served as little more than a focusing mechanism. If we were more attentive and retentive, I feel sure that no journal would be necessary. We'd just see and retain, but the noise in the channel and the distractions make daunting opponents when we're trying to make sense. It's easiest to dim focus and go a little more unconscious, to kick back into our future, which, while undoubtedly permissible, rarely proves optimal.

I have shelves filled with old journal books. I rarely go back and read through any of them. Much of their content now seems so situational that, without the original context, they seem trivial or meaningless. Still, they serve as a foundation of my present practice. They remind me that I have wisdom I cannot ever become aware enough of possessing. Wisdom that sometimes needs accessing and that I have mechanisms to access it. I sometimes think that my life has encouraged me to become altogether too introverted for my own good, but I do not for a second begrudge any time I spent journaling. It was how I managed to TalkMyselfThrough my transformations, and how I came to acknowledge insights that continue to change my life for the better. I still have mentors, but none better than the one I found lurking near the end of my journaling pencil.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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