One little way to make your life bigger

the daily taryn - april 27th 2021

I’m not sure why, but I’ve been feeling a little quieter and more 😌 than normal. I go in phases like this and it has tons of benefits, like slowing down. Taking my time. Going on walks. Reading, then wanting to share what I’m learning.

I also become increasingly obsessed with organizing and retaining my memories. My thoughts, experiences, the things I’ve learned. That’s why I’ve consistently journaled/logged my days since I was a kid. I try to journal throughout every vacation. I take pictures of… literally everything. I have 51,000 photos and videos on my phone right now, and so many more littered on hard drives everywhere.

I just hate not being able to remember things. When my brother goes, “remember that time at Disneyland when..” and I have no idea. I feel… not real. It’s scary. It’s definitely one of my “big fears” — those 1-3 things that are so scary about life, you don’t even know how to articulate them. I’ll try, though.

To me, memory is kind of all there is. If I feel things or do things or see things or hear things but I don’t remember them, are they mine? Sure, they impacted me and that’s powerful in its own right, but I want to know more. I want to stretch it out. How will I learn from things that happened if I don’t remember what they did? How can I grow from them? Help myself or others?

The real driver behind all this: I often picture myself old and gray and unable to do the things I used to do, like kick a ball around a field or drive to the beach on a whim. Have 1000 mimosas for brunch or watch a dumb show surrounded by friends on a Tuesday night when I really should be working.

I need to have access to my past. What did we do in Amsterdam? What was my first kiss like? How does a break up feel? What was I like in 2011? Why was I like that?

It makes me think of my grandma who, although she’s in a nursing home and is now completely blind, has the sharpest mind in the west. The last time I saw her, she did not see me. Bad blind joke. But really, the last time I saw her. I asked her what it’s like to be there. “Oh you know, it’s boring. I do the same thing every day. But I have had enough life, and I relive it in my memories.”

That fear/obsession drives me to write down basically everything. I have a wild amount of physical notebooks (and go in phases where I carry this little guy around at all times) and write in Day One every day. It’s borderline OCD, which makes sense because my therapist says I have “borderline OCD tendencies.” I remember when she told me that because I remember how it felt, but more so because I cemented those feelings when I wrote them down after our session.

What’s fun about these quiet seasons of life is that this hobby (?? way of life?? idk) helps me stay productive towards my eventual goal of writing some kind of book. My favorite essayists/non-fiction writers log their thoughts/learnings like this too, but they’ve taught me to take it farther by collecting learnings from everything, then connecting them. Because they went the extra step of writing it down, they can be writing about sadness and connect it to an interesting fact or powerful anecdote from a movie they watched or book they read.

They’re masters in making connections and it makes for visceral writing that is real and whole and deep.

So, lately, I’m helping my future self write a book with just a few extra steps. When I’m reading a physical book, I mark the whole thing up with a pen, and when I’m reading on my Kindle, I’m a highlighting machine. It’s not enough to do that though — to retain the information, your brain has to do something with it. It has to make associations or teach what it’s learning.

I’ve started doing mini book reports for myself when I finish a book. I’ll mark it up until I finish, put the book down for a day or two, then pick it back up and go through it. I’ll write down what I highlighted and then try to pinpoint what it did for me — why I liked it enough to underline it. How it connects to things I know/have been through. I say it in my own words and make it mine. At chapter breaks, I summarize what I’ve learned. Not everything — just the stuff I need.

Now, when I look at our bookshelf and see a book I finished, I don’t go, “ah yeah I remember loving that one” without a clue why. I see a book and go, “woah. That one. That one taught me why anxiety can be good. It told me that funny story about the road trip which reminded me of my uncle which reminded me of that time in elementary school where I understood why friendships matter.”

The book is the same, but it’s also not. The book is bigger. It’s deeper. It’s more real.

If you can make a book bigger just by being more present, more engaged, and more willing to jot a few things down throughout, imagine what that could do if applied to your life. Bet it’ll feel bigger too.

Anyway, just some thoughts while I drink my morning coffee and watch Riggins beg for Frank’s attention. Classic.

Talk soon — weekly again, I think. This newsletter is too precious for me to go so long without it.

Your friend,

Taryn

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