Composting the Messy Middle: Writing Grown from the Seeds of Journaling
Radical acceptance of creative uncertainty = waiting for the tide to rise.
Part One of this post is a stream-of-consciousness journal entry I wrote to myself on July 11, 2025. It’s raw and written entirely for me, and captures why it’s so important to me to keep writing—even when it feels messy and directionless. I wrote it in the morning, during a week when I felt creatively untethered and ungrounded. That evening, after a full day of coaching sessions, I was in the shower when another piece poured out of me. One with a voice that felt clear, with a message I wanted to share.
I could not have written that second piece without the composting I’ve done in my journaling—processing, writing to understand, jotting down fragments of ideas and feelings that don’t fit into the puzzle just yet.
Composting is a huge part of my writing practice. I write whether it’s “good” or “bad.” I just write. I keep coming to the page. I keep the channel open. It’s still hard. In moments of doubt, I wonder if I’ll ever write something I’m excited to share—if I’ll be journaling and composting forever.
I used to wonder the same thing about the gym. I used to think, Maybe today’s the day I never go to the gym ever again. It’s interesting to observe myself saying the same thing about my writing. Maybe today’s the day I never have any ideas to share ever again.
Over time, I’ve been collecting lived-experience data points that help me remember that “never, ever again” is a feeling, not a fact. The more I write through the fog, the more I trust that something’s out there waiting for me on the other side.
I wouldn’t say that Part Two is “better” than Part One, or that Part One isn’t valuable as it stands. Part One is a journal entry written from inside the fog. Part Two is a more lyrical evolution of the same thoughts and feelings, written on firmer ground. When I connect the threads, I’m able to see what composting can do.
I am sharing both so you can see it, too.
Part One: Notes from the Messy Middle
This has been a strange week. I’ve tried multiple times to write an essay, record a podcast—but in all of my attempts, I don’t really go anywhere.
I don’t have a clear vision, idea, or direction to share.
I am in the messy middle.
I’m not sure if it’s because this is the week before my period, and perhaps historically this is the time of my menstrual cycle when I struggle to feel direction.
I’m not sure if it’s because I have been reeling after my therapist said the words, “Have you ever considered if your mom had narcissistic traits?”
I also tried to go to the bookstore twice this week. I left without books both times, and felt disappointed both times. Money scarcity stuff, I think.
Every day, I've sat down to write at my computer. Every day, I've written somewhere between 800 and 2,000 words. But no essay. No threads to pull to spin and weave into something solidly formed.
It's frustrating—the kind of frustrating that makes me start to wonder if I should give up. I feel defeated, like I'm making no progress. But I don't think that's actually true.
I'm craving clarity, vision, direction. I'm craving the pull and tug of an idea and a message to share, but I’m grasping at air. That’s how it feels.
I try to remember that this is a common experience for me. I've felt it lots of times before now, and it's never felt that way forever. It hasn't stopped me from continuing to write and continuing to record podcast episodes.
But it's difficult, being in the messy middle.
I guess if I were to ask myself how I want to feel instead, if I could feel any way—I'd want to believe that the messy middle is where the magic happens.
The messy middle isn't a sign that I'm doing something wrong.
The messy middle is like... an uncomfortable indication of my persistence.
It would be like wondering why my biceps aren't growing after I finished a set at the gym. I need more protein and more time and more rest. It's not a waste of time, or effort, or energy. And the size of my muscles cannot convey the strength of my relationship with movement. I have made it so safe to be at the gym.
I had this thought the other day that nothing interesting has happened to me since we moved into the hotel. I don't think that's true, either. I think my perception is distorted because I am living in it. I am inside of it. But when we move back into our home (maybe in August now), I will be separate from it. I'll be able to look back and see things that I probably can't see right now.
This is how it goes.
The discomfort of a messy middle isn't a sign that it's time to give up. It just means that it's a cloudy day, and you can't see the yellow of the sun, or the bright blue of the sky. That doesn't mean they don't exist. It just means you gotta wait for a sunny day.
I'm hoping that's true for me, now, too.
I'm going to be totally honest—I feel almost annoyed that I'm writing this. "Again? I'm here, again? Haven't I done enough to get out of purgatory?" It's frustrating. I don't want to be writing about how hard writing is. I want to be writing OTHER, more INTERESTING things. It's true. I do.
But this—what I'm writing right now in this moment—is what feels most true and real and alive to me. This is what I'm struggling with and sitting with. It's annoying as hell, but it's what I've got. It's where I'm at. At least it's honest.
Maybe what I have now that I didn't have before is the learned memories, the lived experiences. The voice that can say, "Oh, here we are again. I've been here before. I remember the last time, and I know that this isn't going to last forever." Because I think there was probably a time where I didn't have that.
I kept going back then so I could be here now. "Oh, hello familiar old friend. You're here today? Alrighty then. Have a cup of tea. Stay as long as you like, and leave whenever you're ready."
Maybe that is progress.
I'm tired of writing feeling hard. I want writing to feel easy. And it DOES feel easy???? It actually does. Which is possibly another progress moment to take note of. Because it didn't used to feel this way. Writing this feels as light and free and easy as journaling. Journaling *is* writing. Writing *is* journaling.
But writing essays—writing pieces not just for the benefit of getting it out of my brain and onto paper but to share a message with others, with myself—that is not light and free and easy. Is it supposed to be? Will it ever be? Maybe that's an unreasonable expectation.
Okay, here's what I'm going to hold onto:
I cannot guarantee that writing to shape a message and share a story with others will get any easier. It probably won't, because it's a difficult thing to do. And with every new story I share, I start from the beginning.
But I can probably say, based on current lived-experience data points, that it gets easier because I am beginning to believe that I can make it through the messy middle.
It's like how I may not feel like going to the gym, or I may doubt if I should—or I might not be able to guarantee that I can lift more weight than I did last week. But I can hold onto the belief that I am doing the best I can, and I'm proud of myself for showing up.
What feels safe and reassuring is knowing that I've been through it before, in the last four years of going to the gym. I have four years of lived experience data that shows me that I'm going to be okay moving my body—even through injuries, illness, vacations. I keep coming back. I am persistent as hell.
I think this will be true for writing too. I hold onto my gym experiences as a reflection of my writing experiences because they feel so similar to me. There's a deep intimacy there—this is something I've always wanted to do, but been so afraid and ashamed for so many years that I wasn't. That shame kept me far away. Moving my body and writing are two different faces of the same die. And I believe that if I could figure out how to do it with the gym, I can figure out how to do it with writing.
I believe that I am.
Part Two: Keeping the Channel Open
This is one of those weeks where I don’t have much to say, and don’t find myself sitting with much to share.
I’m writing hundreds or thousands of words every day, but they are more for me than for anyone else.
I never know exactly if it’s my brain—my chemistry and hormones at this particular stage of my menstrual cycle. If it’s sleep patterns that I’m not even aware of. If it’s stress. If it is the emotional processing and integrating I’m doing in the background. Or something else—something unquantifiable.
Keep the channel open, as Martha Graham once said. I’m learning to live that out.
I keep trying—I keep going to the gym. I keep reading. I keep writing.
It’s not perfectionism, not like how it used to be. Perfectionism was a grip on my shoulder, hard and pressing—a constant presence whispering that everything I do is not good enough. Judgment so powerful that it either spurs me into over functioning—a wide-eyed horse galloping in fear—or collapses me into despair and unworthiness. I am nothing. I will always be nothing. Don’t bother.
I don’t think this is perfectionism. I don’t sense its weight at my shoulder. It feels instead like the ocean tides. In some moments I move inward. In some moments, I move outward. In other moments, it seems like I am not moving at all.
We do not ask the ocean to cease its relationship with gravity. We do not rage at the moon for pushing the water closer, or pulling it away. We just watch as it happens in front of us. And if the tide is too low for our ships, we wait for it to rise.
I keep the channel open, and wait for the lap of the ocean’s edge to kiss my toes in the sand. I wait for the tide to find me again.
I don’t stop writing. I persist.
Just as there are days when I go to the gym and struggle through a workout, finding the same movements so much harder than they were the week before—those struggling days do not keep me from going to the gym. They implore me, invite me, to ask myself if there’s anything I can do—how’s my sleep? How’s my eating? How’s my stress? How are my rest days? How’s my recovery? I look at what I can change and for the rest, I keep the channel open. I keep going to the gym, even if it means using one dumbbell instead of two. Even if it means goblet squats instead of barbells, or separating my movements instead of doing them as a superset.
I make it safe to do less, and I drop the barrier to entry. I make the victory condition a far cry from impossible. I bring it close.
If I do this at the gym, I can do it with my writing too.
When I’ve done what I can, I come back to the page.
My writing is a reflection on my current state of being. It is the one thing besides perhaps a candid photograph that can capture the essence of one moment—inside of me, instead of out. My mind is like the weather, ever changing. Writing is how I mark it down: “Clear and sunny today. Wind speed 18 knots. Sunset at 9:07 PM.”
Some days I take short, clipped notes. Other days, lengthy expositions. Others are epistolary—letters to my younger self, or to help my future self remember. I write to document, celebrate, and connect with friends. And others still, there are days when nothing I write makes any sense at all. Not even to me.
Those are the days I’m writing not because I know, but because I’m writing to uncover, to discover what’s there.
Through it all, I remember:
I am not here to wrangle the ocean tides or wrestle submission from the sea.
I am here to keep the channel open. I am here, the shipmaster, creating a safe harbor. I don’t control the weather—I don’t control the tides. I document what’s here.
I keep the channel open. When the tide is low, I write for me. And when the tide rises, I write to share. And through it all, quiet waters and crashing waves, drifting or pulled, I keep writing.
Thanks for reading both the fog and the clarity. I hope it helps you stay with your own process, too. Even when it’s messy. <3