The Benefits of Writing on Mental Health

Often, I look at the figures for views on this blog and wonder who I am writing it for. On the face of it, being a public forum, anything written here could be read, reproduced and potentially used to subsequently beat me with. In the grand scheme of things, this little collection of hand-picked and carefully combined words has no purpose. I imagine it enlightens nobody. It is a self-indulgent outpouring of opinions and feelings which is just a tiny part of the great cacophony of what constitutes public discourse. So, why do it?

I have no idea if a parallel can be drawn between mental exercise and physical exercise. Constantly performing a physical action strengthens and ingrains the mechanisms involved. Repeating a mental action must then surely have a similar effect. Repeated practice of a language, for instance, improves one's proficiency in that language. And also, it has carry-over benefits into other areas of cognition.
Does writing work similarly to improve some aspects of mental acuity or fitness?
I don't feel on the face of it that not having regularly written for a long time has diminished my vocabulary or ability to articulately explain a concept. But would I be able to tell?
Regardless of this, there exists a body of evidence that says regular "creative" writing (as opposed to correspondence regarding one's gas bill or an inquiry about a mower seen for sale on gumtree) has a measurable effect on mental wellbeing.  I suppose "wellbeing" in this sense probably needs some kind of qualification. I suppose I mean freedom from anxiety and constant dark thoughts. Possibly also general a high level of "zest for life" might be a part of it. A wider definition almost certainly exists but I shall assume that we tacitly understand between ourselves what well-being means.

Firstly, I suppose, it seems that to tease out those formless and menacing fears which beset us in unguarded moments might clarify their composition from their tangled interconnections. This may allow us to examine their individual assertions and effects upon our mood. The linear nature of this method of expression means only one thought at a time can come down the fingers to be typed on the keyboard, making the others stand aside and wait their turn, or once examined diminish to the extent they no longer need saying, and hence become less troublesome. When I lie awake at night, fears of financial disaster haunting my existence, the precarious nature of my cashflow or workloads dominating the dark perspective, taking them one at a time does seem to disempower some of the more vociferous worries. So, we potentially have this as a benefit.

Also, whether as a result of my neurological mishap, my advancing age or merely currently having a lot on my mind. I get a lot of aphasia. Last week for instance I flapped my hand impotently at the radiator trying in vain to remember the words "tea towel". This is increasingly a frequent occurrence. Given the heightened risk of dementia in survivors of brain injury, I cannot pretend this does not worry me.  It causes me to practice vigilance towards all aspects of my mental behaviour in case any sign of decline becomes evident (though what I could do besides stockpiling opiates, I am not sure).

Maybe ranging far and wide over the full range of our vocabularies is a Generally Good Thing. It might be seen as a verbal "beating of the bounds" where we travel to the far extent of our lexicon to see what resides there. There may be words depicting concepts the expression of which might be useful to us in some current frustration. Like a tool found in the recesses of the shed which enables us to finally complete some household job which has been annoying us for a while, the discovery of exactly the right word might enable us to confront and clarify something which has been on our minds for a while seeking a voice.

In the spirit of discovery, I have enrolled as a research subject on a scientific study on the effects of writing about traumatic events on our mental states. I have no idea how well-conceived and constructed the study is but it seemed a fun thing to do in the furtherance of Human Knowledge.

So, with the assumption that using as many words as are available to me on a regular basis, in order to retain vocabulary, and that the principle that examining thoughts and committing them to writing must surely aid clarification, I think I may resume this blog. If nothing else, writing allows me to retain a pretension towards intellectualism that my new life and actual intellect may not really warrant. And for that alone, I shall keep tapping away!

Where do we go now?

Nothing is the same. Except me. I, as a general collection of cells, (mostly) endure but in all other aspects, everything is new. I read back to myself some of the posts from my Old Life and there is a strange ambiguity to them. As I sat on aeroplanes, pitching up in airports in Germany, Norway, China, the life that had seemingly constructed itself for me seemed like a kind of fortress: Its complete all-worked-outness seemed eternal, as constant as the continents. The house, the marriage, the kids, the job, all smoothly in place and there in the middle of it, me. We should never forget the shifting of tectonic plates however.

So now, just a few years later, everything that comprised that life has been replaced. Divorced, new partner, different (and eye-wateringly expensive though smaller) house in a different county, job gone, salary and professional status a mere memory, kids grown up and flown. Psychosomatic illnesses all disappeared.

And now I am a gardener. Whereas for over thirty years I made my living using my intellect, my technical knowledge and my affability, now I use my body. I mow lawns, I weed borders, I make raised beds. And all the mathematics and engineering I set about learning to ensure a prosperous future, back when I was young and not quite so cynical, all superfluous. And I almost never sit at a computer. Except to do my book-keeping - a necessary and tedious evil of being self-employed.

I confess, sometimes I shake my head in disbelief. I take my hand fork and jab the back of my arms as a surrogate for pinching myself (which would be difficult with gardening gloves on), just to make sure I am not dreaming. I am not, as far as I can tell. This is the reality. And I am happy.
Mostly. Oh, there are times I wake in the night and can't get back to sleep for the strangeness of it all. How such a complete life could, like the Roman Empire, be so all-encompassing, so perfectly administered, so well constructed and yet topple and disintegrate into a fact of history. But though life is incredibly financially precarious, I no longer have to deal with idiot Texan managers and their aggression, their self-important failure to grasp their own insignificance and mediocrity.
I grasp mine and am the better for it I think.

So, no longer will I write about being in a pressurised cabin 37000 above Russia, or hotels in Paderborn. I will write about my life as a relatively menial service-sector worker and the experiences of what I encounter as I go about maintaining order and careful disorder in the gardens of Gloucestershire. I may have left a profession behind, with all the trappings, but I take largely the same mind with me into this new venture. Observation is still just as possible. As Xavier Le Maistre catalogued his voyage round the confines of his room in autour de ma chambre so shall I remark upon the prosaic happenings in horticulture. I have no idea how interesting it will be, and I shall not do it here, because I feel a hiatus is required to mark the monumental transition. But I shall do it somewhere. Words need to flow if the mind is to be retained in a form I am comfortable inhabiting.