Sometimes I just have to write. I gain perspective on the thoughts that sometimes assail me. This is my morning routine but I sometimes let it get away from me. When it seems like there’s no time to relax and everything with a deadline was due yesterday, it’s time to write.

It’s not always grammatically correct or complete sentences, sometimes I write lists, phrases or draw pictures and diagrams. It just has to get out through my hand(s). Sometimes I type in a computer journal, but for maximum effect, for me, I find that writing long-hand grants me deeper connection with things going on in my world and how I’m ultimately relating to them.

Random thoughts fly into my head when I’m tired and sometimes I just try to capture them in a shorthand version of what they tell me. Often there are several things at once, phrases and images floating around my mind, or whirring through. When I am in a real hurry, and deadlines and dreams overwhelm me, that’s when I’m forced to take a deep breath or miss something critical—that’s happened too. I find that free writing helps me regain my clarity and focus.

I forget the history of the term “free writing,” or where I first heard of it. I came to fully understand it in a book, The Right to Write, by Julia Cameron. It may even have come from her book. All I know is that’s where I understood the good that comes from just writing what comes up, just for the sake of catching it. The whole process makes everything clearer.