My neighbor Sarah asked me to listen to the episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast featuring Jeff Tweedy of the band Wilco. The journalist and the musician were discussing creativity.

Tweedy talked about writing first thing in the morning before anything else— no news, no email, no thought. Just words on a page.

Ezra said when he tries that all he ends up with are to-do lists.

Their discussion got me thinking about my own regular journaling practice which I started 30 years ago. In recent years much of what I have noted is done bullet style with occasional deep dives into the events of my life.

But what if I phrased anything I put in my journal as poems? Horrible terrible poems but poems.

For instance, instead of writing “Foster cats Khloe and Louise are getting closer to liking each other every day. They now sleep on the same bed at the same time with only a foot or two between them” it could be something like…

The fleet foot one is moody,
The clumsy one timid. 
The who among them that starts the throaty snarls varies from time to time. 
Slowly, their soft warm bodies 
draw closer to each other, 
ignoring the other princess drifting to slumber in the soft blankets.
When we find them, these insecure beasts of opposing kingdoms, their paws might almost touch.

To learn more about the Ezra Klein Podcast from the New York Times, click here.