This is where it begins. In the first episode of Think on Paper, Andrew and Tanya sit down for the conversation that started the whole project: a frustration with commercial journals that skate over the surface, and the question of what a journal could be if it asked you something real.
Andrew explains why he stopped buying off-the-shelf gratitude-and-affirmation journals and started writing his own questions instead — roughly eighty of them, grouped into eight areas of life, the kind of questions no one had ever actually asked him. Tanya describes what happened when she first read them: not a quiz, but more like thinking out loud on paper.
From there, the conversation opens out into why an unexamined inner life is worth examining, where journaling sits alongside professional support, why a pen on paper does something a keyboard doesn’t, and how ink, handwriting, and even the nib itself shape the way you think. It’s a candid, unhurried first episode about getting back to thinking on paper.
What we get into
(00:00) Why write your own journaling questions — Andrew on his frustration with commercial journals: gratitude and affirmations that felt cheesy and superficial, "skating over the surface" instead of going deep.
(01:25) Eight categories, eighty questions — Dividing life into eight areas (family, friendship, relationships, work, money, health, spirituality, and more) and writing about ten questions for each — including the ones nobody ever thinks to ask.
(03:06) Reading the questions for the first time — Tanya on "dissecting your soul without you knowing," jotting down notes she didn't expect to write, and the freedom of not having it all figured out.
(04:47) We're all the same underneath — Buddha, the Delphic oracle's "know thyself," and Socrates: why the same deep questions haunt a 97-year-old grandmother and a 15-year-old teenager alike.
(06:09) Rummaging in your own attic — The case for self-examination — and a clear line that deep trauma calls for professional guidance first, not journaling alone.
Get full access to The Writing Practice at