From My Briefcase: Personal morning pages good way to start day

I was talking to myself this morning as I deftly applied makeup. Normally I talk to my cats, or Jasmine, my dog.

Then, I said to myself, it's a good thing no one else is talking to you. What I meant by that was voices talking in my head telling me to do strange things. I laughed out loud.

Talking to myself is an important form of communication. I say very worthwhile things to me.

And it doesn't take any particular technology to do so. I just have to take time to listen. And I'm worth taking time for, pardon the preposition at the end of that sentence.

That's not something I did much of in the past, take time for me. Yet it's something I do every day now and have for three years.

And the best "technology" I have to pay attention to what I'm saying to myself is a fat, easy-glide ink pen and smooth, lined notebook paper.

Each day as soon as I wake up, pour a cup of strong coffee, feed the livestock (cats and dogs), I take time to write what's called by author Julia Cameron my "morning pages."

Three pages, stream-of-consciousness, as fast as I can put the words on the paper. What comes out varies. Sometimes I complain Oh, when is my life going to get better? Oh, when will I have enough money? Oh, when will there be a love interest who actually has a brain in his head? And who's a hunk besides a 50ish hunk I'm not too demanding.

Other times I write my dreams odd things they are too, but they often tell me about my fears. And once on the page, they lose their power over me. I can see them and puzzle out their meaning.

Sometimes I write my grocery list because I think I have nothing to say, but before I know it I'm telling myself about a current worry, or desire, or need.

Funny things, morning pages. It isn't until the middle of the second page that I get to the real meat of what I need to say, so I just keeping writing knowing the words will come. And if they don't today, they will tomorrow.

Morning pages serve as a dumping ground for my brain activity. Once dumped, my brain becomes less frazzled, more creative, less inclined to obsess.

On the days I forget to do them or don't have time because I've overslept my day gets creepy fast.

Until I remember what I forgot. No matter what I'm doing then, I must stop and write three pages. Once done, I'm free to continue my work. The niggling anxiety that accompanied me is gone, booted out, swept away.

But tres importante morning pages are mine and mine alone. No one ever sees them. It's my chance to say exactly what I have on my mind, safe from cruel critiques, or, say, lawsuits for defamation of character. They are definitely not for publication. I do have this thought that someday my children, Josh and Robin, will read them when I've gone to that newspaper in the sky, and just laugh and laugh and laugh. "Boy was Mom weird," I can hear Josh say. "No," I can hear Robin retort, "she's just like you!"

The concept for morning pages came from a book I've read and re-read Cameron's "The Artist's Way" a book recommended to me by my friend and mentor, Margaret Castrey, a successful freelance writer and all-round swell person. Once I read it, I starting using the tool of morning pages.

What a scary thing, at first. Just who was I? There had been no time in the past 15 years to find out. The morning pages revealed me to me. Who I was had been lost. I didn't even know what I liked to do.

I knew what my then-husband liked to do, and my children. But me? I had no clue. Until the morning pages.

What I like to do is write. Draw messily with pastels, getting the color all over my fingers like a kid. Watercolor. Hum tunes from La Boheme, pretending I understand Italian. Dance the two-step. Read. Ride horses. Play golf. Eat lunch with my friends. Crochet lace. See funny movies. Piddle around, doing nothing in particular.

As I revealed the things I liked to do, I also noted when the last time was I did those things. Sometimes, it was years 20 years occasionally. As I wrote the morning pages, I understood why I has lost track of me.

I had been busy, plenty busy. Small children, busy law practice, sick husband, house to tend. I learned about balance, as I wrote. I drew a pie chart and listed these parts of my life: work, spirit, body, play, rest. Then I placed them in the pie with the edge of it indicating a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most time. Then I connected the dots. Boy was my life out of balance!

How had I done that to myself? Easy, the morning pages told me. By not listening to me, by stuffing my thoughts and feelings and just trudging along doing what I thought was right. Why didn't that feel good?

Because, the morning pages said, I wasn't thinking and feeling. And, as friend Bill Wear Jr., says, would I rather be "right" or "happy?" Happy, the morning pages voted.

There's nothing particularly New Age or mystical about the morning pages, although I do get a kind of buzz sometimes when the words flow like milk, and sometimes, I can see my hand writing, but I seem to be distant from it, detached, as if someone else is making the pen move across the page. That's when I know I'm truly into creativity.

So there I sit each morning, writing, drinking coffee, stroking my cat, Cheetoe who insists on sitting on my lap under the large wood cutting board I use for a writing table, on which to write.

When I'm done, I'm free. Open. Receptive. Creative. Alive. Thanks morning pages.

(Cheryl Capages is a reporter for the Springfield Business Journal.)