Journaling Prompts & Other Reflections #5

Exercises for a curious mind

End of year is always such a potent time for reflection. One wants to think of what comes next as dates shift from some high-number to some low-number. Or some high-number to some higher-yet-number.

As such, here are some exercises you may enjoy.

Give yourself a tarot reading. You don’t need tarot cards in particular to accomplish this, as tarot is a form of message reception from some outside or external influence. Tarot cards help to give image and definition to received messages, but with intent, attention, and focus one can condition themselves to these messages anyway.

I like to follow a path of deliberate randomness in my tarot practice. This is to say: pick a number between 3 and 8 that feels most impactful in your now. If you have difficulty deciding, say them aloud and see if your mouth lingers or overpronounces one number over the others. This will form the structure of your reading.

Then, determine if you are feeling this reading from a hind- or a fore- perspective. Hind being looking back at things that have happened to you, with you, and coming to terms with them. Fore being looking forward to things yet to come. I determine this by physical sensation: am I conscious of pressure or weight on my butt? That’s a hind. My feet? Fore. Hips? Fore. Neck? Hind. Chest? Hind. Lower back? Fore. Your body will tell you its time.

Draw your cards. Use the number you chose above and close your eyes. Draw these cards and place them in front of you with as little intervention for direction as possible. When you’ve finished drawing, do not re-arrange. The placement dictates the story. If you’re using playing cards, postcards, or other non-tarot descriptive elements, try to find connective tissue: numbers, symbolism, or even just feel of the card.

Did you find your question resolved? Can you steel yourself for what lies within and beyond?

Create a trail for yourself musically of at least six songs. Through Apple music, or spotify, or pandora, what have you, whatever you use. Make a radio of one song you’ve been listening to lately. Then find a song you haven’t heard in that radio and make a radio of that. Keep going down this until you feel sufficiently distant from your original song. Listen to this playlist, radio, what have you for exactly eighteen minutes, forty-three seconds. Stop it. What is the lyric being sung at this time, if any? If none, what instruments are playing? What’s the vibe? Document it.

Any leaves around you? Go outside and pick up some four leaves of varying sizes. Take them in and trace them on a journal page. Overlap them or spread them out accordingly. Feel free to let the lines play with each other. Then fill the outlines, the arranged shapes, with words. What words belong in the compositions that nature’s death provides?

Have any spare postcards lying about? Go back to one of your past addresses and find a residential address a few streets away. Write a sincere note of positivity, of hopes, and of affirmation without a return address and mail it to this stranger. Or with the return address, if you feel safe enough. A small beacon through the winds of post.

Open the second-closest book to your person at the time of reading these prompts and go to page 64. On page 64, scribe every 16th word in a spare page. What’s the sentence created? Is it sensical? What are the images? Meditate on the profundity of language finding ways to insert itself in your being, your capacity.

Compose for yourself an in-out-predictions list for 2025. I find this a fun exercise. I used a series of random generators to create mine. Random celebrity generator, random noun generator, random location generator, random gossip generator, random event generator. The only thing I didn’t generate randomly was tangerines being in. This was something I felt very deeply in my heart. How long are your lists? Share them with me, I’d want to know what you find to be in and out and possible.

Where would you be next year if you could stomach change? Take this question as vulnerably as you wish for it to be. It can be as simple as: at my favorite cocktail bar chatting away with buddies whenever I can. It can be as complicated as: at the pinnacle of a cumulonimbus dancing with a symphony of mermaids. What does the heart cough for?

Enjoy your wanderings, friends.