A peak into my 2024 commonplace journal
I read a respectable number of books in 2024 year, went all in with my creative practices, avoided fast fashion for sustainable clothing, traveled abroad several times, ate my fiber, kept up with all the movement and wellness practices one typically includes in a New Year’s resolution. Yet looking back on these feels par for the course, these pursuits should simply be the fabric of a well-lived life, not achievements to enumerate.
Instead, I’d rather flip through my commonplace journal, a faithful journal since 2017. For those unfamiliar, a commonplace journal serves as a personal anthology of things that have resonated such as collection of quotes, sayings, lyrics, artistic observations, and other encounters that leave a mark.
Mine captures everything from literary passages and podcast insights to song lyrics, observations from art exhibitions, and even elegant sentence structures that I discover in others' writing.
Whenever something lands in my commonplace journal, it is usually a message that I know is bringing depth, wisdom and value to my life’s journey. And also on an ego level, I like having my own personal quotes library of things I actually came face to face with rather than some google search for quotes.
This is also my quiet rebellion against the endless stream of context-free Instagram quotes - those neatly packaged bits of "wisdom" stripped of their source and full length.
Instead, these are words discovered in their natural habitat - stumbled upon then underlined, dog-eared, scribbled, overhead in a podcast or live panel discussion, or found in the depths of essays written by people wrestling with real thoughts.
So I want to invite you to some of the words that moved me this year. Each one has earned its place in my Commonplace journal organically, captured in a haphazard fashion. I considered organizing them into tidy categories/themes, but that felt too manufactured, too much like the packaged wisdom I'm trying to avoid. Instead, I'm sharing them as I encountered them - random, through happenstance.
“Sometimes when you hear people talking about the human self you would think that it is made out of stainless steel and is meant for perfection and purity, But we are clay creatures, striving desperately towards the light.” Walking in Wonder by John O’Donohue (1997)
“There was a contest of wisdom one time in ancient Greece to find who could write down a sentence which would somehow always be true. The sentence that won the competition was “This too will pass.” Walking in Wonder by John O’Donohue (1997)
“No dear, souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.” Middlemarch by George Ellot (1890)
“We mortals, men and women, devour many disappointments between breakfast and dinner time; keep back tears and look a little pale about the lips, and the answer to inquires say, ‘oh, nothing!’ pride help us; pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.” Middlemarch by George Elliot (1890)
“Whenever she entered a room where they were, they stared at her with a queer, speculative look. Sometimes she caught snatches of their conversations about her. ‘Sure, she’s a wonderful cook. But I wouldn’t have any good-looking colored wench in my house. Not with John. You know they’re always making passes at men. Especially white men.’ After that she continued to wait on them quietly, but she wouldn’t look at the - she looked around them. It didn’t make her angry. Just contemptuous. They didn’t know she had a big handsome husband of her own; that she didn’t want of their thin unhappy husbands. But she wondered why they all had the idea that colored girls were whores.” The Street by Ann Petry (1940)
“Anything you do everyday - that’s your life.” Any Person is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert (2024)
“The one who was never denied anything, whose tears a worried mother wiped away for whose sake a babysitter got the blame, will have no resources against shocks to the systems. For nothing will make adults more prone to anger that a soft and cloying upbringing” Seneca
“May I love more
May I be more present with those I love
May I approach the moment before me with care, awareness and openness - from my yoga teacher in class (Feb 2024)
“Being in your 40s is so interesting. It's like you’re being asked, “Are you going to stick to what’s normal and predictable? Or are you going to take some big risks and live the incredible eccentric life you’ve always dreamed of” Gala Darling’s Note on Substack (2024)
“Keep on treating our young as though they’re heirs rather than humans; possessions rather than blessings; woes rather than wonders; legacies rather than loves. Continue to let the plantation inside of us grow and tangle. I’ll tell you one thing: All that will do is ensure our doom.” Brandon Taylor, Sweater Weather (2024)
“There is something about kitchens that invite intimacy. I suppose kitchens are a space for intimacy because I will touch with my hands the things that will go in your mouth; I will taste what you taste; I will work for you or you will work for me. I will make this for you because I love, because you need it, because you want it.” Essays on Food and Life by Ella Risbridger (2020)
“I do not want to see how skillful you are - I am not interested in your skills. What do you get out of nature? Why do you paint this subject? What is life to you? What reasons and principles have you found? What are your deductions? What projections have you made? What excitement or what pleasure do you get out of it? Your skill is the thing of least interest to me.” Art Spirit by Robert Henri (1923)
“No one is clean, living makes you dirty.” Pachinko by Min Lee (2017)
“We don’t really learn anything properly until there’s a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped for.” Alain De Botton (1997)
“Your people contain incredible potential but they die without using much of it.” Dawn by Octavia Butler (1987)
“Our culture is now obsessed with deception and misdirection - and it’s not just on the movie screen anymore. You see it everywhere, from cosplay conventions to bands wearing masks. Lifestyles are increasingly about pretending. Your real self stays in hiding, while your fake self gets presented in the most spectacular way on social media.” Ted Goia, Substack (2024)
“Aliveness should be a goal in life. It means self-determination, living a life rich with experiences, freedom, possibilities, adventure and being able to define yourself.” Heard from Ester Perel’s podcast
“The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache and sometimes you feel 100% healthy. To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-mans-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” Pema Chodron on podcast
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” heard on a podcast
“Go to the same place for outdoor landscape paintings. Observe life before painting. Make a list of places to paint and go there repeatedly, you will see new things each time, avoid postcard scenes, they put too much pressure on you.” Artist Sandi Hester 2024
“Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours…If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.” Devotions by Mary Oliver (2017)
“Life as a couple implies decisions. When shall we eat? What would you like to have? Plans come to being. When one is alone things happen without premeditation: it is restful. I got up late; I stayed there lapped in the gentle warmth of the sheets, trying to catch fleeting shreds of my dreams. I read my letters as I drank my tea, and hummed.” The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir (1969)
*all artwork shown here by Janet