the origin story of "scream of consciousness"

Hello!

My name is Rebs. My government name is Rebecca, but what’s the fun in that? Most call me Rebs or Reba (yes, like the country icon), but NEVER Becca or Becky. It’s just not for me, ya know?

I started my podcast “Scream of Consciousness” back in March of 2022, but what many of you probably don’t know (especially if you’ve never listened, which you MUST) is THE ORIGIN STORY OF SCREAM. There’s a 7% chance I’ve shared this on the podcast, but after 45+ episodes, you start to lose track of how much embarrassing shit you’ve shared with the entire world! We’re going to go deep here because I have no other setting, so here goes – 

I found a knack for writing at a young age. Writing felt natural to me in school, and it’s where I excelled. I didn’t have the language to express this until recently, but my brain has always needed extra processing time in real-time conversations. I’ve always found it easier to get my thoughts out in text, email, journaling because I have time to think and to edit a bit. My thoughts flowed much better in written word or even physically through dance. I was a competitive dancer for ~15 years of my life, and it’s where I processed all my teenage emotions. Dance is an entirely separate series of posts I could yap about for years, so, back to writing…

English was one of my favorite subjects. I was incredibly lucky to have amazing English teachers in high school and early college, and tried my hand at minoring in English in college. My major in Marketing felt far more practical at the time (2012), and ultimately decided to drop my minor as it didn’t feel worth the time or effort. Since then I’ve always used writing as a tool for processing emotions and just getting my thoughts out. My head is constantly swirling with curiosity, and it’s sometimes really uninhabitable if I don’t write the thoughts out. Writing things out is a physical release for me, as well. My thoughts become far less abstract and doomy, and become much more tangible once they reach paper. So many of my thoughts spread out across my 4 active physical journals, google drive, iphone notes, sticky notes…

(We’re going to skip over my fashion & lifestyle blog stint from 2016-2018 and come back to that in a later post because it’s too iconic to not share. BUT THE TAKEAWAY HERE - this was early in the days of podcasting, and my goal was to one day have my own podcast one day :))

(We’re also going to skip over my @sadontheweekend poetry I wrote in 2020-2022 because…yes, too iconic for this post). 

Right before my 30th birthday in 2022, I came down with COVID pretty bad. Being stuck in bed, I was reading a lot. And reading inspires me to write, so I wrote. A lot. I was inspired by a Joan Didion essay about keeping a diary, and I wrote a response to that in a way that I ultimately named, ”Scream of Consciousness.” As I was writing, “scream of consciousness” rolled off the fingers as if it was the actual phrase. I laughed when I subconsciously wrote it, and it hit me in my COVID delirium that there was something to this.

I’ve always felt like I’ve had to scream my thoughts onto a page. The phrase felt so…me. Always needing to voice nearly anything on my mind. To ask questions. To stay curious. Not to be confused with nosiness. And thus, “Scream of Consciousness” was born as a personal writing series/my journal/anything I’ve ever written down LOL. With the help of Anders, my then boyfriend, now fiance, the phrase morphed quickly into a podcast. He had the podcast equipment and professional editing skillset - why couldn’t we make my podcast dreams come true?? My notes app is a funny, strange place which was the driving force of my podcast material.

For the last 2 years, we have been doing the podcast and have had so much fun. But as of late, I’ve been feeling a calling to write more. Or rather, share more. I envision this as a collection of casual journaling, original poetry, essays, random thought-daughter questions, photography, doodles, and anything I'm hyper-fixating on at the moment. 

Below is the OG journal entry that started the “Scream of Consciousness” world.

Scream of Consciousness: The “Truth” of a Diary

While reading Joan Didion’s essay, “On Keeping a Notebook,” I felt a strong push to pick up my laptop and write. Everyone keeps a diary for completely different reasons. For me, writing is to get outside of myself when my head gets all twisted like a vibrating pretzel. It’s not to be shared. It may seem obvious, but memorializing one's innermost thoughts on paper is wildly intimidating. To open up your head to yourself, really, you quickly become two things: you become an innocent bystander. And then later, re-reading, you become judgmental. If you keep a diary the way I do, I do not recommend re-reading.

I tend to write, not in the heat of the moment certainly, but reflecting back and furiously squeezing out those feelings like a dry lime after a tequila shot. I try to be honest. But truthfully speaking, honesty is not so fun to write about, especially when recollecting feelings. If I feel sad for a specific reason, I will compound that sadness by layer-caking as many other reasons as possible. I know I’m not alone in that. And so, I don’t know how much honesty exists in the feeling of feelings. 

For the record, I’m not journaling everyday. Typically, I write when I’m quite happy or want to funnel salt in the wound. As the masochist I claim to be, I will go back and read my writings and my face will get twisted up just like my vibrating pretzel brain. I usually will do this while, mentally, I’m in homeostasis. So I laugh a bit before slamming my computer shut out of embarrassment. The drama! My therapist would not appreciate that I discount my own feelings!

I don’t think there is really a definitive “point” I’m trying to make here. How much honesty is there in feelings? When journaling, how much of the truth do we actually tell, and is it subconscious or active? Does a reliable narrator really exist?

If you made it this far, thank you! Xo, Rebs