I read a respectable number of books this year, went all in with my creative practices, avoided fast fashion for sustainable clothing, traveled abroad several times, ate my fiber, kept up with all the movement and wellness practices one typically includes in a New Year’s resolution.
Yet looking back on these feels par for the course, these pursuits should simply be the fabric of a well-lived life, not achievements to enumerate.
Instead, I’d rather flip through my Commonplace Journal, a faithful journal since 2017. For those unfamiliar, a Commonplace Journal serves as a personal anthology of things that have resonated such as collection of quotes, sayings, lyrics, artistic observations, and other encounters that leave a mark.
Mine captures everything from literary passages and podcast insights to song lyrics, observations from art exhibitions, and even elegant sentence structures that I discover in others' writing.
Whenever something lands in my commonplace journal, it is usually a message that I know is bringing depth, wisdom and value to my inner world. And also on a basic note, I like having my own personal quotes library of things I actually came face to face with rather than some google search for quotes.
Janet Asante Sullivan’s Commonplace Journal 2022
Keeping up with my Commonplace Journal is also my quiet rebellion against the endless stream of Instagram quotes - those neatly packaged bits of "wisdom" stripped of their soul and source, floating in the digital void.
Instead, these are ideas and wisdom I discovered in their natural habitat - stumbled upon, then underlined, dog-eared, scribbled, pressed rewind on my audio device or nodded to during alive panel discussion.
Still Life by Janet Asante Sullivan Oil on Canvas (2024)
These are the kind of insights that stick around, that surface again on my walks, while laying on my yoga mat or I revisit years later with the comfort of my hand writing in view.
So I want to invite you to some of the words I wrote in my Commonplace Journal this year. Words that moved me. Each one has earned its place in my Commonplace journal organically, without curation or chosen for any contrived vibe/aesthetic other than it vibed with me in that particular moment.
I considered organizing them into tidy categories/themes, but that felt too manufactured, too much like the packaged wisdom I'm trying to avoid. Instead, I'm sharing them as I encountered them - random, by happenstance.
Still Life by Janet Asante Sullivan Oil on Board (2024)
“All of us are imprudent and thoughtless, all are unstable, contentious, ambitious, and why hide with gentler words a sore that’s clearly seen? - we’re all of us evil. So whatever each of us finds to reproach in another, he’ll find also in his own breast. Why call attention to one man’s paleness or another’s leanness? Plague is everywhere. Let’s be kinder to one another; we’re just wicked people living among wicked people. Only one thing can give us peace, and that’s a pact of mutual leniency.” Seneca (4BC-65AD) from the book How to Keep Your Cool (2019)
“People are not all wounded at the same spot. It behooves you to know what part of you is vulnerable so you can protect it most of all.” Seneca (4BC-65AD) from the book How to Keep Your Cool (2019)
“Sometimes when you hear people talking about the human self you would think that it is made out of stainless steel and is meant for perfection and purity, But we are clay creatures, striving desperately towards the light.” Walking in Wonder by John O’Donohue (1997)
“There was a contest of wisdom one time in ancient Greece to find who could write down a sentence which would somehow always be true. The sentence that won the competition was “This too will pass.” Walking in Wonder by John O’Donohue (1997)
“No dear, souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another.” Middlemarch by George Ellot (1890)
“We mortals, men and women, devour many disappointments between breakfast and dinner time; keep back tears and look a little pale about the lips, and the answer to inquires say, ‘oh, nothing!’ Pride help us; pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts - not to hurt others.” Middlemarch by George Elliot (1890)
Janet Asante-Sullivan Oil on Canvas (2024)
“Whenever she entered a room where they were, they stared at her with a queer, speculative look. Sometimes she caught snatches of their conversations about her. ‘Sure, she’s a wonderful cook. But I wouldn’t have any good-looking colored wench in my house. Not with John. You know they’re always making passes at men. Especially white men.’ After that she continued to wait on them quietly, but she wouldn’t look at them - she looked around them. It didn’t make her angry. Just contemptuous. They didn’t know she had a big handsome husband of her own; that she didn’t want their thin unhappy husbands. But she wondered why they all had the idea that colored girls were whores.” The Street by Ann Petry (1940)
“Anything you do everyday - that’s your life.” Any Person is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert (2024)
“The one who was never denied anything, whose tears a worried mother wiped away for whose sake a babysitter got the blame, will have no resources against shocks to the systems. For nothing will make adults more prone to anger that a soft and cloying upbringing” Seneca (4BC-65AD) from the book How to Keep Your Cool (2019)
“May I love more. May I be more present with those I love. May I approach the moment before me with care, awareness and openness - from my yoga teacher in class (Feb 2024)
Janet Asante Sullivan Oil on Board (2024)
“Being in your 40s is so interesting. It's like you’re being asked, “Are you going to stick to what’s normal and predictable? Or are you going to take some big risks and live the incredible eccentric life you’ve always dreamed of” Gala Darling’s Note on Substack (2024)
“Keep on treating our young as though they’re heirs rather than humans; possessions rather than blessings; woes rather than wonders; legacies rather than loves. Continue to let the plantation inside of us grow and tangle. I’ll tell you one thing: All that will do is ensure our doom.” Brandon Taylor’s Substack Sweater Weather (2024)
“There is something about kitchens that invite intimacy. I suppose kitchens are a space for intimacy because I will touch with my hands the things that will go in your mouth; I will taste what you taste; I will work for you or you will work for me. I will make this for you because I love you, because you need it, because you want it.” Essays on Food and Life by Ella Risbridger (2020)
Janet Asante Sullivan Oil Pastels on Wood Panel (2024)
“I do not want to see how skillful you are - I am not interested in your skills. What do you get out of nature? Why do you paint this subject? What is life to you? What reasons and principles have you found? What are your deductions? What projections have you made? What excitement or what pleasure do you get out of it? Your skill is the thing of least interest to me.” Art Spirit by Robert Henri (1923)
“No one is clean, living makes you dirty.” Pachinko by Min Lee (2017)
“We don’t really learn anything properly until there’s a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped for.” Alain De Botton (1997)
“Your people contain incredible potential but they die without using much of it.” Dawn by Octavia Butler (1987)
“Our culture is now obsessed with deception and misdirection - and it’s not just on the movie screen anymore. You see it everywhere, from cosplay conventions to bands wearing masks. Lifestyles are increasingly about pretending. Your real self stays in hiding, while your fake self gets presented in the most spectacular way on social media.” Ted Goia, Substack (2024)
Still Life in Progress Janet Asante Sullivan Oil on Board (2024)
“Don’t ask children if their childhood has been ruined by Covid or social media. Instead of focusing on the trauma, ask them about resilience. What has made them strong, resilient?” Writer Jason Reynold’s response to Journalist Krista Tippett in live discussion at Georgetown University’s talk on Being Young in America on 11/18/2024
“Aliveness should be a goal in life. It means self-determination, living a life rich with experiences, freedom, possibilities, adventure and being able to define yourself.” Heard from Ester Perel’s podcast (2024)
“The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache and sometimes you feel 100% healthy. To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-mans-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.” Pema Chodron on podcast (2024)
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” heard on a podcast
Photo by Janet Asante Sullivan, Still Life Prep
“Go to the same place for outdoor landscape paintings. Observe life before painting. Make a list of places to paint and go there repeatedly, you will see new things each time, avoid postcard scenes, they put too much pressure on you.” Artist Sandi Hester 2024
“Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours…If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.” Devotions by Mary Oliver (2017)
“Life as a couple implies decisions. When shall we eat? What would you like to have? Plans come to being. When one is alone things happen without premeditation: it is restful. I got up late; I stayed there lapped in the gentle warmth of the sheets, trying to catch fleeting shreds of my dreams. I read my letters as I drank my tea, and hummed.” The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir (1969)
“I have made friends with some of my pupils and younger colleagues: I like them better than women of my own age. Their curiosity spurs mine into life: they draw me into their future, on the far side of my own grave.” The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir (1969)
“Young men, having no real joy in life and no hope in the future. how can they commit the indecency of begetting children without first begetting new hope for the children to grow up to? But then, you need only look at the modern perambulator to see that a child, as soon as it is born, it is put by its parents into its coffin.” D.H. Lawerence’s poem Young Fathers (1923)
“Blessed be those who have loved you into becoming who you were meant to be. Blessed be those who have crossed your life with dark gifts of hurt and loss. That have helped to school your mind in the art of disappointment…Blessed be the gifts you never notice, your health, eyes to behold the world, thoughts to countenance the unknown…on this echoing day of your birthday, may you open the gift of solitude in order to receive your soul” Birthday Poem by John O’ Donohue in the book To Bless the Space Between Us (2008)
I love the idea of keeping a notebook or commonplace journal but I am too terrible at it. I tried index cards for a while but that too fell by the wayside. Do you always have your journal with you or do you go back later and write it down? I would love to learn more about your commonplace journal practice if you are willing to share!
“Being in your 40s is so interesting. It's like you’re being asked, “Are you going to stick to what’s normal and predictable? Or are you going to take some big risks and live the incredible eccentric life you’ve always dreamed of” this one definately speaks VOLUME to me ! thanks for sharing xxx
I love the idea of keeping a notebook or commonplace journal but I am too terrible at it. I tried index cards for a while but that too fell by the wayside. Do you always have your journal with you or do you go back later and write it down? I would love to learn more about your commonplace journal practice if you are willing to share!
“Being in your 40s is so interesting. It's like you’re being asked, “Are you going to stick to what’s normal and predictable? Or are you going to take some big risks and live the incredible eccentric life you’ve always dreamed of” this one definately speaks VOLUME to me ! thanks for sharing xxx