Issue No. 3 — October 2025
Next Issue: November 14, 2025
Stories and reflections to help you live more intuitive and clear

Writing Pros and Cons with Honesty

Stories and reflections on clarity, healing, and presence, written in the quiet hours of night

Writing Pros and Cons with Honesty

The boardwalk wall is cool beneath her palms. Salt air moves across her face in steady breaths and carries scraps of conversation from the path behind her. Waves roll in, lift, and fold over on themselves, leaving a thin white seam that slides back into dark water. A gull calls once and fades into wind. Farther down, someone’s speaker thumps a soft beat that rises and falls like a second tide. She opens a folded sheet of paper on her lap. The crease is worn smooth from too many attempts. A pen rests in her fingers. The page waits without hurry.

She draws a line down the center, firm and straight. One column for yes. One for no. The structure is simple, yet her shoulders climb anyway. Her breath stays closer to her collarbones than she wants to admit. Teenagers pass behind her, laughter bright against the hush. Sand whispers over the boardwalk with each gust. She writes a first pro that anyone would write. She pauses before the second. The sea keeps time on the pilings and the pen taps twice against the page. The list is not hard to make. The honesty inside it is the work.

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Where the List Gets Heavy

She turns to the cons. The first line arrives slowly and lands heavier than the ink should allow. Naming it gives it mass. Another line follows, quieter and more honest. The breeze lifts hair across her cheek and she tucks it back with the same hand that holds the pen. A skateboard rattles over seams in the boards and fades toward the pier. She keeps writing. Each sentence makes the page more balanced in shape and less balanced in feel. The pros look polished. The cons hold something truer. Her jaw keeps a small effort she did not intend to keep.

She knows this pattern. When she wants an answer, she can dress the yes side until it gleams. She writes benefits in clear fonts and stacks them neatly. She adds timing, opportunity, praise from other people, and calls it reasoning. Then she sits with the result and her chest stays tight. Tonight the ocean refuses to match that posture. Night air moves in and moves out without debate. The list reflects that contrast in real time. The neat column is not wrong. It is incomplete. The other column carries what her body already knows but has not given words.

What an Honest List Is For

She remembers a choice from last spring, numbers counted and charts made. The list looked decisive on the table. She circled the side with more items and called it clarity. Two months later she was awake at three a.m., throat dry, counting reasons again as if more math could repair a mismatch. That memory sits beside her now like a quiet witness. She looks at tonight’s page and sets a new rule she can live with. The list is not a judge. The list is a mirror. Its job is not to decide for her. Its job is to show her what is already true.

She tests that rule with small actions. She crosses out one pro that reads like marketing. She adds a con that sounds less like a fear and more like a boundary. She notices the shift. Breath moves lower. Shoulders drop a fraction. The ocean throws a brighter line of foam then darkens again. She adds two questions at the bottom that anchor her back to herself. Which side aligns with who I am becoming. Which side asks me to leave myself to make it work. The pen hangs in the air for a second and then writes the quieter answer without drama.

The Line That Decides

The next wave hits the pilings with a hollow thud and pulls back in a long hush. She circles a single sentence on the cons side. It is not the longest or the cleverest. It is the one that makes her chest soften when she names it. The circle is small and deliberate. She draws a line through two pros that depended on other people behaving well. The page becomes simpler. The decision is not finished. The weight is different. She feels the difference in the muscles around her eyes and in the unclenching of her hands.

She gives herself a sentence she can keep. I will choose as the person I am growing into, not as the person I am afraid to disappoint. The words fit in the margin and seem to steady the rest. Footsteps pass behind her and a dog’s leash clicks against a belt. Far out, a boat moves along a faint line of lights like a patient constellation. She exhales longer than she planned. The pen taps once. The habit of pleasing quiets enough for the next good step to become visible.

What Follows an Honest Page

She folds the paper once and runs her thumbnail along the edge until it makes a clean crease. The sound is small and final in the best way. She slides the paper into her jacket pocket and feels its shape settle against her. The decision can wait until morning. The integrity cannot. She sits a minute longer to let her body register the change. The boardwalk lights hum in their sockets. The speaker down the way clicks off. The wind turns cooler and the salt smell sharpens. She is not certain. She is steady, which is the kind of certainty that matters here.

On the walk back toward the car, she rehearses two honest sentences she can use when it is time to speak. They are shorter than her old explanations and do not carry apologies. She passes a couple sharing fries from a paper boat and smiles without slowing. Her phone vibrates once and she does not reach for it. The folded page moves lightly against her with each step, not as a burden but as a proof. She has not chosen yet. She has chosen how she will choose. The difference changes everything about tomorrow’s conversation.

The Truth Beneath

Pros and cons can help you see. They cannot feel for you. Numbers on a page can stack until they look like certainty, yet the body will tell the truth the list tried to cover. An honest list names what pulls you forward and what asks you to leave yourself. It asks you to subtract the items written to impress or protect. It asks you to add the lines that do not look elegant and carry the most weight. When you let the page be a mirror, the reflection is not always comfortable. It is reliable in a way comfort rarely is.

Write the list with clear eyes and a steady breath. Cross out what flatters. Circle what clarifies. Ask which side aligns with who you are becoming, then trust the answer that quiets your jaw and widens your breath. You are not asking a page to make your life for you. You are asking a page to keep you honest while you make it. The truth is simple enough to keep. Let the list reveal, not dictate. Let alignment carry more weight than count. Choose from there, and your next step will fit the ground that meets it.

If you’d like to support this writing: ☕ Buy me a coffee

This article is part of the Derek Wolf Blog, published at DerekWolf.com.
Derek Wolf
Derek Wolf
Writer · Storyteller · Intuitive Teacher
© 2025 Derek Wolf. All rights reserved.
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