Kafka, Walt Whitman, Fernando Pessoa, Camões, Hemmingway, Tolstoi, Jane Austin. From the greatest writers of all time to your everyday journaling, writing is how we materialize and carve our soul urges. We can write our thoughts, but I’m sure that the greatest writers of all time and the most healing journals are transcriptions of the soul. The mind is nothing but a vessel.
Since I can remember, writing has always been my safe place. I started journaling frequently when I was around 11 and it was a serious business. Being a professional writer has been my secret dream forever. So secret that I couldn’t even admit it to myself. Turns out, we can’t bargain with our soul’s purpose. No matter how hard we try to escape it, life will keep pushing us, closing doors that are distracting us from our mission. It wasn’t until I started writing for The Mood Guide about how aesthetics can help us live a mindful life that I started to accept that I am a writer. Telling stories and helping women through written words are my call in this existence. So, consider this writer’s aesthetic post, a manifestation move.
I hope it makes sense to our readers, of course, but this one, I am writing for myself. It’s my gift for my dreamy, lonely, confused, scary, but very brave teenager who was called weird and ungrateful every time she tried to stand up for herself. I see you, little one, and you are absolutely perfect. Thank you for all the poems you read, for loving Literature and Philosophy, for writing down over and over again every song lyric that spoke to your heart. Thank you for all the times you isolated yourself in your bedroom, writing about your feelings, emotions, and fears. Thank you for creating all of those fantastic fantasy Worlds so we could survive our real-life nightmares. You saved us. And I’m sorry I took so long. I am a writer now and I claim my own at any hazard.
“Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,
These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense and interminable as they,
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain, passion, dissolution.” (To You, Walt Whitman)
And the thing is, I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t started writing about aesthetics 3 years ago. When my sister and I had our first meetings about the purpose of The Mood Guide it became clear that we wanted to help women connect with themselves through intentional shopping. It’s bold and almost contradictory trying to make a living by encouraging women to not buy compulsively, but intentionally. Tough road, for sure. Absolutely worth it, though. At the end of the day, I was helping myself along the way.
We have tons of posts that reminisce the Writer’s aesthetic. Dark academia, Light academia, Ravenclaw, books, coffee, rain. I know now that writing them or even just reading them and looking at those images over and over again connected loose ends in me. That’s why we do what we do, that’s why we are obsessed with the power of aesthetics.
Therefore, If you made your way to this post, I hope you know that life is trying to tell you something and I hope you can find your way as a writer. The World needs all the fantasy, hope, love, adventure, dreams, romance, metaphors, allegories, beautiful songs, stories, and poems we can write.
Journaling Aesthetic
And because it all started with my habit of journaling, I hope it can inspire you to journal. It’s widely known that journaling has tons of benefits for mental health, especially for lonely people. A lot was said about it during the pandemic when we all struggled with being isolated, but even if you have all the companionship in the World, sitting quietly with yourself is a precious exercise of self-knowledge.
There are tons of “how to journal”tips on Pinterest and blogs, but this is ludicrous and dishonest. Journaling is about pouring through your hands whatever your consciousness can access from your heart and soul at that moment. It’s a profound self-healing process that goes beyond our thoughts. Thoughts can be deceiving. No one has a map of how you can reach your soul. It’s your job to do it. Your soul knows the way even if your mind doesn’t. Trust yourself. Just give it time and let it out at your own pace. When you follow someone else’s chart, you’re being guided by exterior forces, but healing comes from within.
Even when you have a junk journal about travels, recipes, plants, or whatever you want to write about, it is your own expression, it is your soul, not somebody else’s template.
Journal & Coffee Aesthetic
It’s a rainy gloomy afternoon outside. You’re wearing your favorite navy checkered scarf, dark green wool coat, brown boots, your journal, and a pen. No computer, your phone in airplane mode. It’s you with yourself today. You walk into the cozy cafe near your place. From the fireplace to your left, you can feel the orange warmth from logs cracking and the flames dancing to their own rhythm. To the right, endless old books pile on wood shelves that take an entire wall, floor to ceiling. “One day, I’ll read all of these books”, you think to yourself. You order your vegan latte, grab your beautiful ceramic cup, and sit at your corner table, by the bookshelves, with a view of the rain through the window and the fireplace across the room. Now, you’re ready for the best date of your life. Your soul has been waiting forever.
Aesthetic Junk Journals
When I was a teenager, I had the most aesthetic artsy junky journals you can imagine. Nowadays, I need big notebooks because I am writing around 160 pages a month. Just get the writing vessel that works for you, regardless of your age. And please, do not compare yourself with anyone. Journaling is a way of connecting with the deepest voices of your soul, your unique and authentic self. It’s not an art competition. I have the most dull journal in the World and it’s one of the most helpful tools in my life.
Letter & Handwriting Aesthetic
When I was 13 years old my family and I moved to a different city. It was before the internet was popular and even long-distance phone calls were expensive. For over a year, I communicated with my best friends via letters. Wow, it feels like a different life. I keep all those letters in my treasure box. For centuries, letters were how lovers and war chiefs communicated.
Honestly, I can’t find anything more romantic than a handwritten love letter. I have kept every single love letter I received since I was 15. And of course, all the love letters I never had the courage to send, because I wrote them too late. I promise, next time, I’ll send them all. Life is too short to not send love letters when you are in love.
What about the letter from Hogwarts? Who never dreamed (or still does) of receiving one?
Typewriter Aesthetic
As I browse through the images, the oldest drawers of my memories are opening up and this is being way more nostalgic than I expected.
Book Writer Aesthetic
And last, the dream of becoming a book writer. I don’t know, but I guess for anyone who loves writing, being a successful book writer is the ultimate dream. The concept of success is very personal, though. For me, it is to make a living out of my books and if I’m very lucky inspire women with my journey. I know a writer who dreams of being respected among critics and academic peers, more than making money.
There is something idyllic about a writer’s life. The depth, the complex mind, the troubled past, the pain that can’t be kept within. Writing books is the most refined way of escaping reality. However, as much as you pour your soul into it, at some point, you must comply with the form and grammar rules, and decide the end. For me, it’s the opposite of journaling. Still, in the most meaningful books that I read so far, the content was larger than the form.
But I guess that’s my take on it. I hope you have connected to this writer’s aesthetic post.
Stella
