# stream: stream your consciousness using freewriting

consciousness is one of the unsolved mysteries of life. some people (including me) also experience an inner voice that just keeps talking talking talking without end. i know some people don't have such voice (reddit calls them NPCs as in non-playable characters, see https://nationalfile.com/redditors-go-viral-for-admitting-to-having-no-internal-monologue-thinking-like-npcs/), and some people think primarily in images or emotions.

but if you happen to have a voice in your head then you can easily record it! this voice often has some good ideas but we often zone out, don't listen to it. and in my case then it goes in circles and says the same thing over and over again obsessively. maybe it keeps telling me the same thing just because i refuse to hear it out. but magical things happen if you keep recording this voice over a long time.

and the tool for recording it is freewriting.

# method

so what do you write?

everything!

get a notebook and simply write down all your thoughts as they come, don't filter, write as much as you can. write every word that pops into your head.

i write one thought per line rather than writing continuosly. this way it's clearer for me where the thoughts start and end.

you don't need to publish these thoughts. all it matters that you write them down. feel free to throw away or shred your notebook after you filled it.

freewriting might also work if you write your thoughts on a computer only. but i prefer writing on paper so i don't have as much experience with that.

# sensitivite thoughts

sometimes you might want to write sensitive thoughts. e.g. vent about your partner that you really don't want them to ever read. if you are concerned about other people reading your thoughts, then just shred your notebook papers right away. sensitivity shouldn't stop you from writing. often freewriting is most useful for the topics we feel sensitive about.

in case shredding is not possible (e.g. you want to hoard your writing), you can try using codewords to encode your thoughts on paper. it's usually only the last sentence that you need to be able to decode and your short term memory will be good enough to be able to decode that for a while.

example: "my preferred 6 p is the sn p." that probably made no sense. but make these substitutions: p=position, sn=sixty-nine, 6=sex. suddenly you can decode that private thought even though for others it makes no sense.

or you can use metaphors. my @/thecook post was a big metaphor for a thing that occurred to me and wanted to vent in a way that the actual event is unrecognizable. that story probably makes no sense for anyone but me. i know what i meant by each concept so the story makes total sense to me and that's all what matters when it comes to freewriting.

it's not really a novel finding that writing helps one sort things out, look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_therapy.

# finding time

if you are a morning person like me, then i think the best time for this is just before going to bed. then the mornings are your productive hours so make sure to spend that on productive stuff. but at the end of the day people are usually tired, they tend to do aimless browsing, netflix binging. rather than that, just try to observe your consciousness when tired using this tool. it's quite fun after you get the hang of it!

published on 2021-11-05

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