Mindful Writing Exercise — “I Remember”

“I Remember” is not only a writing exercise.

I write every day.

I write because I feel like writing.

I write because I want to be better at writing every day.

But sometimes it was not easy to put first words on paper.

I start to meditate for one hour every morning to improve my ability to focus and let my mind free. I think it works.

By the way, if you think something is right for you, it will be good already.

Besides, I enrolled in a short workshop on writing from Dani Shapiro.

She suggests a book and training related to it that I find it very useful. The book is a memoir book named as “I Remember” by Joe Brainard, and there is a series of brief entries, each sentence begins with the words “I remember”

In the book, there is no connection between the memories; he wrote as randomly.

Dani Shapiro advises this as a writing exercise because your pen is hard to stop. I fill up my “I remember” phrases only one-page every day in just a few minutes.

The pleasing part of the exercise is not just starting the day by writing. After finishing one page, it is grateful to take a look at what I wrote and to see my mind from which memory to jump another one.

With this exercise, I explore similar feelings or common points between memories that awake my mindfulness.

Finally, she encourages her students to do this exercise handwriting, not to on a computer.

“The hand is moving at the speed that the mind is moving, it slows everything down and creates more space for there to be able to be a capacious sense of what’s in there” by Dani Shapiro

To be more explicit, I want to share one of my “I remember” page;

I remember watching my father learn to drive a car while he took me to school.

I remember not wanting to stop wearing black shirts when I was going to high school.

I remember that we had dinner at my grandmother’s house on New Year’s Eve.

I remember that we came out of my grandmother’s house in the dark, the cold breeze hit on my face

I remember that I love to sleep in the car on the way home.

I remember getting excited as I entered a new year.

I remember watching the fireworks from my house window as we enter 2020.

I remember I like watching playing cats when I was a child.

I remember my sister-in-law’s dog exhale on my face and it was hot breath.

You got the logic.

I find this exercise useful and increase my self-awareness. Try it, and maybe you like it too.