Nationality: American

Age: 21

Occupation: Student 

Residence: Mason, OH, USA

Date: 4/29/2025

Language: English

Description

Okay, so I used to do, uh, the Artist’s Way morning pages. Uh, the Artist’s Way is a book by Julia Cameron, I believe. And in this book, it’s sort of like an artist’s like creative process book where you are supposed to go through this program, and each day of the program you are supposed to write three pages before you do anything. Like you wake  up and you immediately have to write three pages. You cannot even take a second to wake up. It’s like you get up, you turn over, grab the pen and paper, and you write three full pages of anything. And that’s a ritual that I used to do. I did it every single day for when I did the program, which is like, I don’t know, like, 10 weeks. I did it a few years ago, and I continued the morning pages for a bit after that, and you would just fill these notebooks and notebooks full of like chicken scratches that made no sense. Like reading back, you’d be like what the fuck was, I thinking, what was I doing? Um. But occasionally there would be a thought or two, uh, unlocked through that process that you were, like, oh, that’s kind of interesting I didn’t know. I think about that, or I didn’t know I think this way about this thing. But yeah, that’s that’s sort of the. Morning Pages. That’s what it is. 

Subject’s Opinion:

Interviewer: Do you think that helped you keep track of your journey in that time? 

Subject: Yeah, definitely, I think. There were many issues and topics that my brain kept circulating, like, just on a day-to-day basis. Like, I would keep on thinking about the same sort of things, and finally writing it down, I was able to…understand what exactly was persisting in these ideas. And find a way to move past that sort of. Circular thought, and also like, maybe not even like, get rid of it. But, like, know that it’s there, and that I’ve written if I’ve written three pages about it, it’s like I don’t have to be thinking about it all day. Um, so it’s almost like a purging of some of your immediate thoughts so you can move on to some things that you never really were able to to get to.

Analysis: 

It is rare to encounter a form of ritual that’s only shared with oneself. But due to how intimate and reflective the nature of the ritual is, I believe it to be valuable to examine how one can share a ritual with only their past self. The throughline of the morning action is clear and intense—the subject is likely always in a daze when he performs the ritual, with the freshness of each day be colored by a train of random thought. In this case, the ritual honors qualities within, and the attempt to discover one’s hidden thought patterns that may lead to heightened awareness and creativity.