Making the Case for Repetition
But not for the reason you might think
When you play the violin, the places where your fingers touch the strings aren’t marked. You just have to know where the notes are.
Over the years, as my daughter learned to play the violin, she spent countless hours doing repetitions, sliding her left hand up and down along the neck, teaching her fingers how to press down on the strings in precisely the right spot every time to make each beautiful note.
In my journaling, I’ve found that repetition has the opposite effect. It almost always produces a different result.
When I revisit a previous entry or repeat a writing prompt, I often see something I didn’t before and take off in a whole new direction. It’s frustrating at times, the sense that understanding an experience or a part of myself is a constantly moving target. But it’s also pretty exhilarating to see familiar things in new ways.
Recently, I’ve been doing repetitions and encountering varying results as part of a new journal adventure.
Repetition Round One: I was curious about the United States Constitution.
I wanted to understand better the conversations I was hearing about the Constitution and thought reading it for myself would be a good place to start.
As soon as I began, I noticed myself skimming over the words and jumping ahead. I needed a hook, a way to slow down and dig into the details. Creating journal pages, something I’m super comfortable with and always excited to do, seemed like the perfect solution.
Drawing that first puzzle and writing the text on the printed page felt wonderfully immersive. I was in it now, forming the words with my hands and thinking about what they meant, which led to the second page, mapping out their plain language definitions. (With a puzzle, of course.)
In my mind’s eye, this project made perfect sense.
Repetition Round Two: I wrote a blog post describing the project.
As I put my thoughts together, my doubts took over.
Am I really doing this? What about all the reasons I shouldn’t? I spent almost the whole post trying to make it make sense.
Repetition Round Three: I made a short video describing the project again.
This time, I didn’t try to defend myself; I just described what I’m doing and talked about the text of the Preamble. I started to feel less doubtful and more purposeful.
Repetition Round Four: I described it again in my newsletter.
There, I focused on where this project fits, which led me to think about the process as much as the subject matter. Instead of traditional journaling, this looked and felt more like applied journaling. Ooh! That was new! And so exciting. I’m still thinking a lot about that over here.
Repetition Round Five: Today
Today, I’m looking at the way my thoughts changed after repeated descriptions — from curiosity to doubt to purpose to a promising new approach. I’m so glad I didn’t stop at doubt.
Here’s a thought for your journal:
Choose a journal prompt you like and write about it several days in a row. Here are a few examples. What do you notice? Do any unexpected themes or patterns emerge?
Alternatively, go back into your journal and find an entry you love. Choose one small detail from it and write more about that part. What else will you learn?
Over here, I’ll keep the journaling the Constitution. I’m only a few sections in, but I’ve already encountered a paragraph that was twice replaced by Amendments, oodles of double negatives, and a set of wording in one section that’s repeated in a later section and I know exactly what it means!
So far, it’s quite an exciting adventure in journaling.