Just Bought Some Ink

Imagine walking along a trail in the early morning. You see a beautiful sunrise in the distance and hear the calm lapping of water from the river next to your path. You feel calm and content for a moment. But your brain begins to obsess over how good the moment feels. You worry about your emotions returning to baseline after the experience ends. Intrusive thoughts enter your mind, "what did I do to feel so calm and content a minute ago?" and "how do I remember this feeling and process so that I can experience this happiness again?". When your mind begins to stray from the present moment and spiral into a rabbit hole of worry, you should take a break and journal. This is the perfect situation to write down your emotions and necessary cues to remind you of this experience and, most importantly how this experience made you feel. This is a process I call snapshot journaling because documenting experiences immediately after the fact is like taking a snapshot of one's...

Do you want to relive the experience of being absorbed in your favorite book? Do you feel like your emotions control you? You can take back control over your emotions and mental state through conscious application of music. For example, gyms always play fast, up-beat music to get their lifters pumped and ready to beat PRs. However, music can actually be used to illicit very specific emotions depending on your experiences.  Any song can be encoded in your mind to represent any emotion or personal experience. This might be absurd, but here are a few examples of song and mental state pairs that I have. Kordhell "Murder in My Mind" is the single-pointed focus I feel when walking briskly through an airport, hell-bent on getting to my gate on time. Billie Eilish "Therefore I am" represents the contemplative state of mind where I can create ideas to write about. Palaye Royale "No Love in LA" reminds me of the struggle and perseverance needed to read papers that I...