Note: Sensory details begin below
I am not a naturally happy person. Not anymore. My initial instinct is not joy, as it was as a child. Through life events, low-level traumas, and general disappointments, like most people my instincts have become that of survival. Negative thought patterns are like quicksand, once I step foot in it is 10x harder to get out. One dreary thought turns into two, and suddenly my entire echo-chamber of a mind is re-affirming each belief until the world around me literally seems to lose color.
Time hasn’t helped. I would wait patiently for something in the universe to shift, for my time of dullness and repetition to be up, or for the world to glow with the color it did in childhood once more. But patience without action almost always leads nowhere.
I’d like to think this isn’t uncommon. I’d like to think that it isn’t some fatal character flaw of mine, or that I’m irreparably damaged. No, I’d guess we all have to work enormously hard to maintain a somewhat positive worldview. I also know, through TikTok videos of people comparing their environments with and without the saturation filter, that we all think the world has lost some of its magic.
Some chase the highs of a life that feels colorful through a well-trained mindset and stacks of self-help books, therapy, or even drugs. That’s what drugs do…they see your broken dreams and retrieve them from your childhood to return them mangled in gauze and glue. It is broken multi-colored glass, beautiful but with the ability to cut. But drugs are not a sustainable option, obviously. So…
How can we re-saturate our inner and outer worlds?
We all know there is not one way to go about it. But, as a person that can only share their experiences and what has helped them, I want to introduce everyone to something called:
Sensory Details: a daily journal that creatively tracks the senses
(not a replacement for rehab, anti-depressants, or anything other than the common case of a dull worldview)
To do what the title says, to see the colors you might have been missing, you have to take off your “sunglasses” and notice. Open yourself up to the colors. Reaffirm your childlike wonder. That’s what this method did for me.
What exactly are Sensory Details?
Thank you Dr. Duraj at USD for introducing me to them:)
They are small sentences or paragraphs about something notable from your day that should revolve around either sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch.
Sensory details don’t have to be impressive, well thought out, or long.
They can be simple, unedited, and short. (Or whatever you want! As you’ll see with mine, they are like small snapshots into fuller moments.)
Along with practicing how to notice and translate your senses to writing, sensory details can be a great way to capture little moments throughout your day like conversations you hear, exchanges you see, or things you feel. Like diet journaling. I’d encourage anyone who wants to create a habit of writing (or even simply becoming more aware of the details around you) to write sensory details on either a notepad or your Notes app.
I can still remember walking on campus, noticing something like an older man holding the door open for me in the first sensory detail of Spring 2023, and writing it down in my phone as if I was afraid to forget it. I’d walk through crowds without looking where I was going, too enamored with whatever moment just happened. I would feel the buzz of the act of creation course through my veins, into my fingers, and onto my Notes app. I left these details as they were not to return to edit/perfect them, but instead to use when creatively stuck or to just remember my year by.
Not only did I learn how to see the world around me (the mundane as well as the interesting) as worth writing about, but I also trained myself to write without such a harsh inner critic. The fast pace of writing something once a day, while still in the moment, leaves little room for perfection. Without the invasive species of perfectionism, flowers can bloom and your ideas/imagination can breathe.
Below, I have included some examples from the last few months, as well as most of my sensory details from my time in the creative writing program.
I hope, as you read, you see the value in noticing things, in remembering conversations that you wouldn’t have otherwise, and in using your imagination to add meaning to the world around you. Add some color in your life by literally writing down the color and by seeing just how special your day-to-day actually is. The small things are worth writing about.
We learn to find the interesting in the uninteresting, the surprising in the horribly familiar, the life in the drab. Each detail in your world is a story…you just have to notice it.
Recent Examples:
The old man on my phone strums his guitar on live video. The walls behind him are orange and a certificate of some sort hangs behind him. His voice fills the hollowness of his guitar as if he is singing life into its shell. The skin on his hands is like crumpled paper, loose and billowy too. He sings about childhood and a church around the bend. Someone named 🚨pussypatrol🚨 comments “never stop playing❤️”, Starzorz comments “this isn’t his real account. just saying,” and someone named ColeThreeMoons is gifted the “No.1 Gifter Badge”. He hums about a garden now. “I come to the garden, alone.” His foot, in a brown wool-lined shoe, looks like a cat's paw as he taps to the beat.
I feel my gut tightening like a fist, choking the elusive promise of youth and beauty I thought I had more time for
My face has thinned and become more angular, like my opinions
Spring 2023
Note: the larger details are the ones I find to be my personal favorites. They are not the “technically best” written but, instead, they make me feel something. The point is for the writing to be accessible and natural. I hope it’s clear that writing without a harsh perfectionist voice is when you get to really feel. Sensory details are for writing that captures the otherwise fleeting.
Man gestured his hands in a sweeping way to allow me to go through the door. His smile took up most of his face and he had a glowing red scarf, circular glasses, white snow hair and made me feel joyful
Three girls sit crying on the marble steps, with their bodies folded into one another, in the windy storm on Valentines day
I sat on my phone missing the world, but when I tilted my head up to the ceilings I noticed that they seemed to expand upwards forever
My citrus linen spray seems to hover like a cloud above the sheets, pulling me in
Saw the most birdshit I’ve ever seen in my life
Worker at the car repair shop stared into blank space, told me and the other guy in here that it was “the most boring room ever”. Said they painted the walls gray but they were once white. When asked how long he’d been working here, he said his soul had been cursed and slain here 300 years ago, but he started in 2019
Customer at the car shop says, “Just landed,” implying he just got here on a trip and had to go get his tires fixed. Worker asks kindly where he’s from and he says angrily “not telling you”
My lips look like I just sunk my teeth into a pomegranate
The beauty radiates through their faces and the love of decade long friendship feels like golden light holding my heart
Quote from Untamed “I am a human being, meant to be in perpetual becoming. My goal is not to remain the same but to live in such a way that each day, year, moment, relationship, conversation, and crisis is the material I use to become a truer, more beautiful version of myself.”
Red rubbery headphones
Little girls in the grocery store look up at me in either confusion or awe with my neon pink lip stain
Boy runs by with a bell pepper in his palm
Ralph’s is playing “This is the Place” by The Talking Heads and I feel it was meant for me
I opened the old artifact, something my papa touched, something my papa cared for, when he was still here. And I held it in my hands as though I was holding him once again.
The faces in the sand keep careful watch of me
The empty desert between the mountains
Old man in the neighboring Airbnb puffs on a cigar on the back porch while listening to a cult podcast. The words “You will be ordained. When your heart and soul want it bad enough…” comes from his phone. Says hi to us in a deep croaky voice
“The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings” - R.L. Stevenson
The rocks like clam shells
Powdery golden tumeric flakes on my tongue
One lone cactus
Purple and orange twinkling lights circle like vines around the palm tree
The single light at the base of the gravel mountain under the dusty blue dusk
My thighs jiggle and vibrate as the car navigates the uneven terrain
A man in a red leather spiked jacket crosses the street with a dog you’d expect a rich mom would have
The girl smacks her lips and chews on the bright green leaves as the ranch dribbles out of her mouth
The voices of the girls echo softly through the hall, bouncing off of the marble like fairies playing catch
The black beetle lifts each leg with care, careful to not disturb the sand beneath
Karaoke, disco lights and people with lost eyes
The flowers looked like bells, if I picked them up they’d chime
The car is a microwave, and the sweat drips down my back as I turn and turn like a bowl
Cinnamon dry chips
Her body like bones, just bones, and her face void of life
I walk around the suffocating grocery store and look down to see my thumb gushing red blood
My new running shoes look like what I’d imagine a dragon's egg would: glowing white but in the sunlight, shimmering blue
Her tattoos stick to her skin, yet feel as if they might jump off and have a life of their own at any given moment
The air in classroom gets tense as the one girl talks, and eyes dart knowingly between the girls
My tongue tingles with the thought of eating Sriracha later
I spray the sea and the sun onto my body, into my hair, and put the cap back on the perfume
Fall 2022
The heat weighed down on me like a blanket. It sat in the room, an unwelcome guest
Through a single crack in the blinds we attempt to watch the scene. The leaves block most of the view, but we can see pieces of the scene unfold, like a broken puzzle. There's a raising of voices, a sudden scuffle of feet, a couple sharp slaps, violent and unforgivable head-banging on the concrete floor, an exchange of words, then finally silence
The melodies of the full, playful piano follow me as I walk further along the dim corridor. An air of emptiness fills the hall. The rain outside paired with the piano makes me feel like I’m in Harry Potter
Damp, chilled air on a sunny day
As the sun hid itself under the horizon, the clouds transitioned from baby pink to a dull gray, like a light switch
Rainbows dance on Ozzie’s face, magical cat
Covid sneaks into my body and my face is so full it is like a balloon ready to pop
A sense of dread and urgency fills my stomach like a brick being dropped from a building
The ocean stings like little knives with its salt in my scrapes
The rainbow lights dance around my car, but once they turn off the grimy dirt on the walls of the car wash are visible once again
Listening to the rhythmic voice of the speaker, the words glide across my body and melt into my skin. Then, they smack me across my face. They are beautiful sounding yet horrific in truth
There’s something so fulfilling about listening to my sad music outside on a gloomy day. It’s sweet
The pink flowers outside seem to blossom from the windowsill
The cold pumpkin goo slides down my fingers
The clouds cover the moon, revealing its face one piece at a time then all at once
The sterile doctor's office makes me feel like I’m in a simulation. It also just feels like a room. But it’s such a weird room.
A woman on the tram gives up her seat for an elderly woman. The elderly woman’s daughter says “Thanks. She has artificial everything. Artificial hips, shoulders,” pauses “boobs.”
The rainbow glistens on the dewy Yerba mate
My professor, with hair like a cat’s thrown up fur ball, looks past me, even though I am in the back of the classroom. He uses the public speaking tip I heard years ago: look toward the wall as if you are speaking to a person, and it will make you more confident without having to make eye-contact. To have social anxiety yet still be a professor must be hard
My head aches with every beat of my heart
I’ve always wondered why I remember my sadness more than my joy. It might be because sadness sits and marinates in the body, while joy is a buzz of electricity. Joy wants to jump from place to place while sadness is content going nowhere. It’s sticky and takes residence in the pit of your stomach. Joy has no such time for that unless you search for it
The sand clings to my toes, creeping up so that part of me looks statue the rest looks flesh
The bodyboarder floats in the middle of the shining jewel-like sea, holding his board as the sun sets in front of him. Nothing but him, the ocean, and the sun.
The tram smells like gum and hand sanitizer
The hot tub bubbles violently
I sink my toes in the mushy sand below and pray to the moon in my wet white dress
A woman walks up to the car. Carlos, the man we are borrowing the car from, says “Hey baby what’s up” in a joking manner. She asks to bum some tobacco. He says he doesn’t have any. She screams that he’s an asshole and shouldn’t live here, then she cries about how she needs her mother. She spits and walks away. I feel guilty and want her to have her mother more than anything.
Something smells like Clorox
The rain drops splattered evenly across my windshield are ruby red from the streetlight
My grandma’s always smells like apples and Christmas. Doesn’t matter what time of the year it is
All I see against the black mountain across the lake are the lights of a truck slowly making its way across the mountain. It illuminates the otherwise desolate hill
The pair of headlights across the black water stare at me gloomily
My cat lays his head to get rest on my leg as I play him meditative music
Everything bagel seasoning reeks after consumption but makes every bite before 10x better
I took off my sunglasses and saw the colors I had been missing
The golden light and the lavender sky swirl together in a dance above the clouds
I feel like a fairy/alien/cyborg with this green sweater on. Grimes' music is also comparable
Self consciousness eats at your soul and makes it so a mirror reflects your reflection back to you every minute of every day
I’ve noticed that I tend to dress how I’m feeling
The chilly air sits steadily in the classroom like another student
My cat lets out a meow so ferocious it might have scared a fly
Watched old man in the row ahead of mine screenshot a girl’s Instagram, DM her with much too many heart emojis, then go through her whole page. All of his other stories were of young women as well. A text message from someone titled “Wife” read “Can’t wait to see you once you land” on his screen
The woman with the cherry chocolate hair talks to the man with the strong stare. They look at a computer together on the plane
A man mows his lawn. Here, you have to play tug of war with nature, just a bit. Give it a push back or else it can take over. A real relationship with it. There is a chance it can rule
The plane floated above the dusty clouds and below the stars. I had never felt so close to space; I couldn’t tell if the stars were above or below