I never expected a teenager’s clarity could emerge from the simple act of putting pen to paper. Yet that’s where the path has led me. Seems full circle in a lot of ways. Let’s unpack this.
Once upon a time…
I was at Michigan State, I studied elementary education because it felt natural, a practical, almost effortless choice. The English minor was my real passion. It pulled me deeper. Authors like Kerouac, Hemingway, Thoreau, Whitman, Dylan were voices I loved.
Then a children’s theatre class placed Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way in my hands. Morning pages changed everything. Three handwritten pages, stream of consciousness. No editing, no judgment.
I can still see it. The top floor of a cape cod just off campus. A candle lit. The pen moving. The page absorbing the clutter of thought until my mind felt as clear as dawn.
Haha, yeah… I wasn’t like the others 😉
That practice followed me west to Portland in the early 2000s. I was the quintessential young teacher, hungry to understand how children learned to write.
At Lewis & Clark College, I studied the craft. The Oregon Summer Writing Project widened my view. The highlight was “Daily Writing in the Spirit of William Stafford,” taught by his son Kim. It carved itself into my philosophy. Stafford believed daily writing was a way of paying attention. His words became my foundation.
For ten years, I watched fourth, fifth, and eighth graders transform when they found their voices. A quiet student lifting their head with the spark of discovery. A doubtful one surprising themselves with the courage of a single paragraph.
There was so much beauty in this experience. These were happy days.
I realized that if children can do it, so can adults.
My big take-away was that expression isn’t granted from the outside. It waits inside, like a seed, until the conditions are right. Plant small seeds from capturing small moments from the day, adding your own thoughts and responses so that you could call it yours.
Yep, it really is that poetic. That’s how I see it.
Then life shifted. We’re now in 2009-ish.
The internet arrived and I hungered for the demand of new skills.
Restless, I left the classroom for digital work. From my kitchen table I learned to shape words that moved people. I crafted emails, various campaigns where I found the rhythms of persuasion in a distracted world. I became fluent in attention as a kind of currency.
It worked, but after six years of helping others make their crap not look like crap so they could sell more crap, I longed for a slower ground where new growth could take root.
Once again, I had to begin again.
Through those screen-heavy years, my three children held me steady. Parenting with shared custody made presence a non-negotiable. In the ordinary hours of meals, homework, bedtime talks, I began to see the real work of growth. It isn’t measured in achievement. It’s measured in attention. Presence.
Presence itself is the ground.
Eventually, I grew up and got a “real” job. Another change.
For twelve years now, I’ve managed a greenhouse that supplies flowers to big box stores.
But what I really grow are the people. The seasons have taught me that growth requires patience, and the right conditions make all the difference. Watching flowers flourish or falter taught me to see the same in myself and in my children.
Because here’s what I see, and how I see it…
Just yesterday, my daughter showed my son a video of a man being shot.
Their minds are being cultivated by forces that don’t intend to grow them but to use them. Social media harvests attention the way a field is stripped bare. I see curiosity being depleted by constant consumption.
And yet, something simple remains. So simple. Handwriting.
Handwriting restores what screens scatter.
When my 16 year old writes by hand and stays with it, her mind begins to quiet. I’ve seen it time and again. I’ve seen it with my 10 year old daughter, too.
My 14 year old son needs a notecard. It feels less overwhelming than a notebook.
The page receives their thoughts until they hear their own voice. From that voice grows confidence. From that confidence, a hunger for the habit of finding stillness.
I hear my daughter say, “Dad, I’m going upstairs to write in my journal.” That makes me feel hope. Because I know.
I peek through the door and see her bent over her notebook, phone set aside. This is what restoration looks like.
The hand-brain connection forges pathways typing cannot. The way a distracted phone cannot. It anchors thought in the body. It slows the mind enough for depth to emerge.
I’m deep in it these days, too. It helps me make these connections here on this page now.
A journal and a pen remain among the simplest ways for a teen to know themselves.
Same goes for adults. Life work, not desk work.
I know both worlds. I know the splintering of attention, the constant tug of distraction.
As Gen X, I’ve lived one of the most striking changes of our lifetime. I also know the integration that comes when ink meets paper, because I return to it daily.
As if my teenagers need another lecture about screens. Instead, they need someone who can name what they feel, or at least give them a compelling reason to write.
My daughter found hers when she didn’t know how to communicate with a crush. I told her to write down different examples. It would be better than staring at her phone.
That small suggestion stopped her thoughts from slipping away. It helped her realize silence doesn’t have to feel foreign. From that moment, a journal was born.
It’s not a complicated way of being. In fact, it’s as ancient as it is near.
It can be a fresh notebook. A dollar store pad and a thin Sharpie. Even the back of a receipt. Notecards or sticky notes. What matters is that the hand moves, and the mind begins to follow.
Slow and steady. Journaling by hand. The voice will come.