The blank page can be a frightening thing. Perhaps even more scary is what lands on it once you start writing.
But in Christopher Pressley’s mind, writing is an important process towards growth as a person. “You can’t judge what comes up in you. Once it starts flowing out, it’s like undamming a river. You don’t know what it built up in there,” said Pressley, a 34-year-old Hartford resident who is a social worker and writer.
He advocates journaling once a day and recently conducted an online workshop for Hartford Public Library espousing his beliefs. The writing doesn’t need to be polished or more than even a few sentences. It’s not making art, although a person could use the journal that way at some point, he said. Journaling is closer in tone and feeling towards meditation, a way of becoming deeply in touch with one’s heart and mind.
“It’s such a personal thing,” he said.
There is no one way to do it. The key, he said, it to approach the process with openness and with a belief that writing will help you.
“(People who journal successfully) identify and connect in some way. They see value from their own perspective, that it is a good thing for me to do,” Pressley said.
Pressley, a Bridgeport native, started writing in middle school and kept up with it into high school. His sister wrote poetry and that inspired him. He lost touch with writing for pleasure in college, but once he graduated the pull towards the craft returned. As he was getting his master’s degree from the University of Connecticut in social work, the impulse to write manifested in short stories and essay, a more direct mode of expression in his mind than poetry.
In his practice as a social worker, Pressley is interested in the concept of self-care and how it impacts the wider community. “Our behavior is definitely a function of the environment … if we are spending time around people who are positive, joyful, and peaceful, they are going to rub off on you. The more we develop that in our community, there more it will be reflected in all of us,” he said.
Journaling is one more tool at his disposal to help people become happier in their own lives, hopefully helping to create a better Hartford.
“If everybody in the world started doing this tomorrow there would be tremendous transformation. It is another tool to see what is going on in your mind. You can see what is going on in your life. You can make changes,” he said.
For people interested in journaling, Pressley suggests taking a look at The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as one way to begin.
- By Steve Scarpa, Manager, Communications and Public Relations