It’s Sunday. December 28. A lull between the manic, joyful madness of making Christmas merry and the tightening of New Year’s noose of celebration mixed with expectation. Yep… so much preparation and anticipation. Then, it dissipates in hours.
Lists. We make ’em before the events. To do. To buy. And then we construct a kind of Fantasy Football League of lists of what not to do going forward, in the annual rush to improve our lives in whatever way is important to each of us in 2026. Yet again.
So, I do feel lists qualify as one form of writing. Bullet points, words next to boxes to check off, and full sentences. Start on a page big enough, and it’ll end up as a journal entry. I used to kind of poo poo ‘journaling’ as not real writing. It wasn’t generally paid, published or impactful on others’ lives. I was wrong. Turns out I have many boxes of archived pages and short-form scribbles. Writer, teacher and big-time meditator, Natalie Goldberg once advised a participant who confessed in our online masterclass to having journals from 10 years ago.
“Oh, just throw those notes out. You don’t need them.” I recoiled in horror. DECADES, I have kept my notes. There are pretty journals, nostalgic covers or businessy books, started and abandoned after a couple or a score of gripping pages. Scrapbooks with notes written LARGE in coloured pens so my deteriorating penmanship could still be deciphered and perhaps seen in a new perspective on the different colours or sizes of paper. I’ve been a closet journaler for years, not even admitting it to myself, apparently.
Below is an email from Kash Khan, whose health posts, DNA testing and theories I have followed for a while. This is taken from his UNCENSORED email, as it is titled, where he is free to say what he deems necessary. It is a complete piece about the science of the power of expression on our very health. Enjoy. I’m going back to slowly decluttering, the semi-legible brilliance I have hoarded all these years, as my holiday project.
Traditionally, a deadline is defined as a time or date by which something must be completed. But the origin of the term is much darker. It came from American Civil War prisons, where a “dead line” marked the boundary prisoners could not cross without being shot. From literal life-or-death consequences, it evolved into something more psychological—yet still stressful—applied to the world of publishing, journalism, and the arts.