Embracing the Discomfort of Self-Reflection With Buster Benson

We all witnessed blogs and online publishing take off as they found a business model friend in online advertising. As that was happening, I also saw private journaling receding from the zeitgeist. And yet, private journaling has always been how I figure things out in my own head, so that the business-y and status-y milestones can be handled with integrity when reached.

As a lifetime journal and notebook-doodler I have always felt that in order to do my best writing, absolutely nobody should be able to ever see it! Only then can I get the real words down, and once they’re down, only then can I fit the puzzle pieces together and figure out what I’m really trying to understand. 750 Words was built so that the words could be locked up somewhere other than my computer or my notebook, and with that reassurance I could do the kind of writing that I enjoyed most. I honestly can’t say where my life would be without private journaling… so many minor epiphanies and resolutions and new idea sparks have happened there, and could not really happen anywhere else.

Discomfort is key to our growth when it comes to writing. Reframe discomfort as play-testing a new writerly persona, and go overboard with it. Don’t think of it as a habit you’re trying to start—we often think of habits as things we do automatically without thinking. Writing is the opposite of that: it’s the repeated re-entry into the discomfort of self-reflection, self-doubt, and self-transformation. It’ll never feel like a thing you can do without thinking, or automatically. But it might eventually feel like a home that you can return to and find yourself in, listen to yourself in, and slowly learn to accept yourself within in new ways as you change day-to-day, year-to-year, decade-to-decade.