(What you’re about to read, is a stream of consciousness I wrote down, after having lost my digital diary and trying to figure out how to feel about it and what to do next)
FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2022
I just opened my note taking app on my iPad. For the past 9 months, I’ve been pouring my most intimate thoughts, my most hidden feelings, into a daily diary note. It’s my most sacred digital space. The first document I open every morning to write down my feelings, thoughts, doubts, dreams. It's the place I document my inner journeys, my inner work. And now it’s gone?!
I have gone through all the documents, searched all the keywords, looked at all the folders, the hidden ones, the deleted notes. Nothing.
As I am sitting here and writing this, I’m at a loss. Part of me can’t believe it. How is it possible that this document is gone? It was here yesterday night. I went to sleep, and now it’s gone?
It seems bizarre. It can’t be. And yet it is. I guess.
I’ve looked everywhere, but it simply vanished.
As if it had never existed.
As I’m sitting here, I’m wondering what to do next. What to feel next.
I had opened my tablet to write down a really important dream I had last night. To record my inner shadows, make sense of my life, my thoughts and feelings. Go to my place of record. Now that it’s gone, I have to decide how to feel about it. What is the narrative here? What should be my response?
I’m not sure right now.
I would have lost my shit back in the days about something like this, that’s for sure.
I hated when things got lost. When I had to search for things unsuccessfully.
It was one of my hidden triggers. One of the things that would anger me that most people would never get to see.
And maybe the same thing will happen here again today.
I can feel that I’m at the edge of a big mood swing.
A part of me is staying calm, being rational, saying to myself “It makes no difference if you get upset. It is not helpful to get angry. You have to accept reality and move on at this point.”
But another part of me wants to explode. It wants to rage. It wants to scream “This can’t be true!!! What the fuck! I had months and months of my life recorded in this note, my deepest thoughts, my hardest inner struggles, so much of my most intimate self, all written down, and now it’s gone?!? And I shall just accept this? No way! No fucking way!!! This can’t be. I’m missing something. This just can’t be true.”
But it can be. It is. At least in this very moment, it is.
Did it disappear to teach me a lesson about letting go?
Is it an opportunity for me to release something I don’t need (the past)?
The most valuable thing about that note was writing it every day.
I barely ever went back to read old thoughts. It’s unlikely I would ever actually go back and read everything. And even if I had decided to do that at some point, that version of a future simply doesn’t exist anymore, so I won’t.
I can let it go and move on.
Maybe I’ll find the note tomorrow and laugh about all of this. Maybe I won’t. (I didn’t.)
It was the ability to write out my life, write out my thoughts and feelings, battle and tackle my inner demons and inspired insights.
The act of writing was the blessing I received. Not the accumulated pile of words I wrote.
I can still write every day. I can decide to let go of the past, of all my past thoughts and feelings, of the very idea of what that note represented and what it meant to me, and move on like nothing ever happened.
Because nothing has happened unless I decide to make up a big story about it in my head.
I don’t have to be attached to this document. I don’t have to be attached to the past.
I can realize that all that really matters is the present moment, and how it shapes me when I fully experience it without attachments to the past.
Writing is what matters. Living is what moves me. Everything else is dead weight.
Let it go, to go farther more freely.
There is no treasure that was lost.
The treasure of that note lives within me.
Ok.
So what next?
Where will I write all these sacred thoughts and feelings now?
How about this very document in which I’m writing in this very moment?
Let’s use this as a new start. A new starting point. As if nothing has ever changed. Because it hasn’t, if I decide so.
Instead of being angry that one note disappeared, I can be grateful that writing has become so very precious to me, so readily available, so intimate and fulfilling.
Creating a new note, naming it, and starting to write in it, as my daily diary journal, is so easy it has already happened without requiring any additional work from me.
Isn’t that amazing? There is no friction, no pain, no effort, no time that needs to be wasted going out and fetching more paper and ink.
It’s instantaneous.
The only thing that might drag me down, might slow me down, is an idea, an inner attachment, a choice.
Do I want to hold on to the memory of that document, the struggle and pain of having lost it, the upset at the mystery of what happened to it (unfortunately or fortunately, there is nobody around to blame, think about that, if my kids were around or I had allowed someone to use my tablet I would be FURIOUS at them right now 100% convinced it was them, but now, with no one to blame, it’s simply a mystery).
The biggest thing it reveals to me, is who I am today.
Today, I am more gracious, more patient, more loving.
Today, I am more willing to let go.
Today, I’m more light hearted.
Today, I’m starting a new place to put down my daily thoughts, emotions, struggles, battles, insights.
I’m starting this new document to check in on myself daily, to do inner inquiry, to work with my inner family and all my parts, to explore my inner universe and express my most intimate thoughts.
Let this be a new beginning.
And if one day, this little document decides to say goodbye as well, let me already wish it a wonderful journey into the ends of the universe.
As I’m sure all things that are lost to us, are found somewhere else in some other shape or form, since energy never dies, and reality never lies.