I torched 90+ journals and notebooks.

and it felt good

I held onto them for a long time. I've held on tightly to many things.
Something happens when engaged in personal reflective writing. There’s a spell or prayer that comes out of it. Complaining or venting in writing has its place, but it's not worth holding onto. I amassed a library of blasphemy against myself — inflicted from inward frustration through childhood, teens, and young adulthood. I was engaged in a spiral of confusion. It was kept alive through all of these notebooks. I had a bridge to my past. I strangely cherished having them. Had I not used them as a portal to the past, I could see not needing the dramatic ritual burn of them—but I feel like I cleared the space by ensuring their erasure from material reality. And if a curious trash raccoon stumbled upon them in the bin, they would engage in the voyeurism of someone else’s life in the rubbish pile. I couldn’t risk it.

I think in the past, I tended to use notebooks like toilet paper for shitty thoughts—dumping chaos onto the page, un-therapeutically, in a creative indulgence, misunderstanding Julia Cameron’s initial instruction. With so many seedlings of creative ideas, there was less fertile ground for any of them to actually grow. They simply had to be weeded.

Especially since, years ago, someone threw away my favorite art pieces from my Adderall-infused visual art era, I felt a strange and unhealthy desire to protect and preserve the distorted and impulsive creations of myself on drugs. I romanticized them. Upon reading the notebooks, I was not impressed or missing the tenacious, feverish work ethic of my former amphetamine-addicted self. I was frightened by it—and humbled by how much I have grown as a writer and human in comparison to what I had previously been.

I held onto them long enough to write my book, Hocus Focus, and they were helpful for that. I used them to reference my Adderall timeline and to display the variance in consciousness on and off amphetamines. Now that what I needed has been extracted and preserved, the obligation to keep them—physically and mentally—takes up space.

Looking through them, I could imagine being dead and gone, and having ancestors look upon these leaves and realize what a whiny little gremlin their grandfather had once been. These notebooks were root, not fruit. They were essential for my growth, but now, as myself—a writer out of the ground and aiming toward the sun to blossom—the roots must stay in the dark.

Why did I have so many?
Short answer: 16 years on Adderall.

I have been keeping journals since I was about eight. A diary that often began with, “Dear Diary, sorry I haven’t written much.” And then I would complain, confide, and reflect. This was all important, but in my commitment to a better future, I need a smaller rearview mirror to see where I am headed.

I am glad it got out of my head and onto a page, but to keep some of it felt like I was withholding their permission to die.

I had thought of anthologizing what I called Adderall Poems—all the chaotic writing and drawings—in a volume titled something like The Sound of Synapse Firing, or something. But I no longer want to attach myself to the times where Adderall was essential to my being. The only involvement I really want to have with the conversation around Adderall is how to depart from it, if someone so desires—not to glorify it through strange and detailed works. If I publish poems, I want them to be from a clear mind.

I slightly romanticized my time on Adderall and believed I was smart, clever, and onto something. Looking at these journals, I was manic in a controlled way. And while I was articulate in my descriptions, and clever in my thoughts, they were all shadows—because I was blocking the light with analytics and ego.

These pages kept me from growing. That’s the story I’m telling—and the one I’m living. And I feel lighter and better about writing with them gone.

I kept about ten that I liked, that weren’t soaked in the pain and confusion of days past—most from the past few years, when I wasn’t addled with Adderall and going on about blame, resentment, and trying to untie the complicated knots of logic I had tied.

I still write in journals and notebooks. But since I reviewed and burned these, I feel like I actually use that reflection wisely—with reverence and purpose.

I realize these journals were me surviving—me getting through things. And now I’m here. And I’m alright. The life-raft landed on shore a long time ago and I can get out of it.

Study the past — the past is prologue.