Work solo but not alone

A close friend of mine lost his wife a few years ago to cancer. They were both in their early thirties when she died.

To cope with his grief, his therapist advised him to start writing his thoughts out to a paper journal. This friend credits this habit of journaling with saving his sanity and helping him recover, as much as you can, from the death of a spouse.

I have never been a diarist. In the past, I have bought daily diaries or just plain notebooks to pen my thoughts at the end of every day but the habit has never stuck. My mind chafed at the thought of opening my diary to a blank section and putting down the inanities, the mundanities of daily life.

Yet, after hearing my friend credit his diary habit with saving his sanity, I decided to give it another try. Yet again, I bought a daily diary and a small pocket diary believing that if I had a pocket diary to jot down notes in as things happened to me during the day, I would be more likely to actually update my diary regularly.

This time too, the experiment failed but a different, related habit has taken root.

I have started to use my diary or any piece of paper really to put down what I feel about a situation I am confronted with. My notebook at work was littered with paragraphs upon paragraphs of my deepest thoughts mixed in with meeting notes and system diagrams.

The entries were not in date order. They often made no sense to me if I happened to read them a few weeks or months later. And they were not restricted to my emotional state or my psyche. They were as likely to be ideas for future unicorn startups and thoughts on the state of the stock market as an entry covering my deepest vulnerabilities.

This compromise seems to work really well for me. Now that I am a solopreneur, I use these throwaway diaries as my uncritical, unquestioning sounding board. It helps me clarify my thoughts and lets me play my own devil's advocate.

The best part is that since I don't have to stick to making my notes in a single diary, I worry less about a loved one finding and reading through my "diary". Since I have young nieces, this is one worry I am happy to have avoided.