Marcus Ikegami

Doctor McGill

English 1010 4R

13 December 2018

The Resource of Writing

Reminders are a useful occurrence for someone who doesn’t exactly have the best memory.

Reminders can come in many forms, a parent reminding you to do your chores, an electronic reminder to

do your homework, or even a friend retelling a story between the both of you that makes you relive the

memory. My own writing appears in my daily life, sitting in my pocket, in my phone, wallet, and comes

in the form of several reminders. The reminders take my often unorganized, underslept brain and set my

path for the day to benefit me. If and when my brain strays from that path, I often take a look at the

writings in my pocket to keep me going and lift my spirits again. Just like humans use natural resources to

benefit our civilizations, I use writing to benefit my daily life.

It was the final quarter of my sophomore year in high school when I was struck with

mononucleosis, something a majority of humans will receive by the age of 35. The difference between

most kids and myself was, at the time, I was abusing drugs and alcohol to cope with my unresolved

mental health issues. This abuse was something that I kept up while I was sick with mono, causing an

influx of other health issues, including meningitis that hospitalized me and nearly took my life. That final

quarter of school I missed every single day from my illness and the summer took a turn for the worse. I

had built up some incredible fears for my own physical health and became a hypochondriac, to add onto

that my mental health and nightly sleep were in a wreck and caused me other extremely severe mental

issues. I was in need of help, and physicians and psychiatrists were wanting to put me on antidepressants.

I was not going to have that, I knew somewhere inside I had the strength to overcome my adversity. I took

to writing to myself, as a form of therapy, to coerce myself into recovery.

 Not once in my childhood had I considered using writing to my

advantage outside of school. A new situation with a new low for me sparked

the need in my life for a change, in which I used some forms of

reminders.My writing to myself began sitting in my pediatricians office

when he handed me a business card for a psychiatrist. I had been reading

the literature of Chinese philosophers Lao Tzu and Confucius at the time, as

I found wiseness in the writing of ancient philosophers modern relevance. I

wrote down my favorite quotes from them directly onto that business card

and stored it in my wallet. I would often look at it in times of intense

anxiety, such as in another doctor’s office, waiting for results to some test

that led nowhere. Much of the problems that I had been facing were caused

by an incredible fear of my health problems. The list of ever growing problems had a synergistic effect

and really brought me down. The cards in my wallet were a reminder to

myself that I needed to be conscious of how I have control over my own

life. The cards were the beginning of a change for the better.

Soon after some of my most threatening problems were resolved I

had noticed that I had lost a lot of muscle and fat mass, and lost about 25

pounds over the summer. I wrote myself electronic reminders on my phone

to notify me every single morning that I should both eat healthy and

exercise. These were important, as the timing would often make the

notification appear on my screen just as I was waking up for school.

Pictured to the right you can see my reminders appear on screen as i first

view my phone in the morning. I’ll admit, it was on and off for the first few
months, but the vulgarity of how the reminders were written was a very effective tactic in the long run.

The vulgarity of my reminders was a tactic that I knew would work on my subconscious. By self

deprecating and saying “eat healthy you dumbass motherfucker” I was looking to the reminders as an

authoritative figure in my life to give myself some heat and get me off my ass. I would use the same tactic

when journaling by heavily criticizing my mistakes I made the given day, attempting to engrain the

behavior as not acceptable in the future.

So how have I analyzed my writing to learn from it? Writing and summarizing the reasons I

wrote to myself as a form of therapy. This closer inspection on the reasons why I began writing and

journaling my feelings has only increased my appreciation for the way I have used writing as a form of

therapy in my life. Do I think I have created a new resource that enhances my daily life? Absolutely.

Webster’s Dictionary defined a resource as “a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of

human life.” Not only has my life become permanently positively changed by my written reminders and

reflections of myself, it has changed my outlook on my life as a whole. Journaling has shown me the

positive effects that the reminders has had on my lifestyle, I’m eating healthy and exercising now, I am

more connected to my emotions, and I no longer feel helpless. In order to come to deeper conclusions to

how my writing is connected to my emotions, I wrote a piece of music.

Music, just like writing, is a very creative thing. Like writing there are almost no constraints to

how you may approach your ideas. Creating music based off the emotions I feel from my writing was no

easy task. In order to channel my emotions, I wrote about my history with my physical and mental illness

and the emotions that came with it, to relive it. The following audio Is the culmination of my feelings of

the birth of writing resource I use in my day to day life.

*Audio file will be inserted here when finished*

I have come a long way since 2017, it feels like years since I was sick and lost in my own mind.

Writing was the essential repairative resource and tool that I used to get myself on track towards recovery.

I would say I have made a full recovery since then, but analyzing how I still use my writing has shown me
I still have much work to do to reach my full potential in life. Reminding myself that I can do it,

channeling my emotions into words or music, and writing down my experience with life has forever

changed how I will look at writing as an essential resource in my life.