If so: Are you writing for person use, for therapeutic reasons? Are you writing creatively? Are you fabricating something to be left behind when you're gone? Are you documenting your progress on some personal endeavor?
If not: Have you before? Why did you stop?
I keep a journal with little aim or discipline. I'm hoping to take after the practice with more direction. I've read several times that coupling a thorough, mindful diary with regular meditation is a powerful tool. What about you?
I have every journal I've ever kept. I keep them in an apple crate in my office. I was actually thinking about posting to Hubski as I'm moving, and whenever I move I shed a layer of possessions. And I wanted to know what Hubski thought about whether I should keep those journals or not. (I've kept journals off-and-on since I was 11 or 12. I took a hiatus of sorts around 19 but still have come back to it, at least minorly. It's a VERY HEAVY apple crate.) I originally started keeping journals a) because I liked to write and b) because I forgot things. Lately I've been questioning the worth of these as, after all, when am I going to reread them? Probably not soon. And probably, a lot of the things I cared about at the age of 13 or 15, I couldn't give a shit about now. But I know I can't bear to throw them away...and that's probably why I haven't bothered asking Hubski what they think; because I know I am going to keep them anyway. I'm not a sentimental person and I tend to throw things away. My mother had a whole box of art/school/'important' work that I'd done from kindergarten onwards, it was stored in my closet. I threw that away. I don't know if she even realizes it's gone. But I can't or won't get rid of these journals. Part of me thinks, if I ever finish that ficionalized autobiography I'm working on, maybe I can use them as source material. Part of me thinks, maybe if I want to understand who I am now better, I could reread them and see what it is I don't remember that may have impacted who I am. Like insomniasexx, my mother has also invaded my private space. I don't know if she's read my journals per se but honestly she probably has read parts of some of them. I can also relate to insomnia in that, if my mother hadn't broken my confidance in that way, I know I would have been more willing to talk to her (eventually) about things going on in my life. Now that she has broken my confidence in her I don't know if I will ever talk to her about the things she has discovered on her own through prying in my personal papers. Part of me thinks, eventually...and part of me thinks, given enough time, it won't matter. I took a break from journaling in college when my life was real shitty and I was going through a lot of stuff. (Around the age of 19.) Now I'm trying to get back into it, but I don't force myself either. I update my personal journal once a week or so. I still find it valuable on at least some level because I still have a shitty memory. Writing down what happens and who said what helps me remember. I also do find it helpful on a meditative level and think it could help me more if I did it more. But do I think it would help me if I forced it? No. Journal writing is so much more personal than even poetry writing - I will force myself to write poetry just to practice writing poetry - but that's not what journal writing is about for me. Most of what I write in my journal is thoughts and records on my day-to-date life. Who I like, who I hate, who I'm dating, who my friends are, what they think, the general details of my life & what I think about what's going on. I've 're-discovered' things about myself from a long time ago by revisiting these journals, confused thoughts that I could only let out in private pages. And it's been useful to look back on. I would hope to continue/resurrect my journaling habits so that me, at 30 or 40 or 50, can possibly gain such insight on how I feel now. Or my thoughts about myself. Right now in the current journal I'm working on, I have entries that go as far back as 12/30/2010, definitely the longest I've ever worked on a single journal. I used to tear through them. I used to journal a shit ton. Thinking on it, now, I feel I should revisit them...but there is also the matter of how much minutiae I don't care about that is inscribed in those pages. You know? How much shit would I have to leaf through in order to mine gems about myself I didn't realize I used to know?
Yup. My relationship with my mother is slowly getting better. I stopped caring about what she thinks more and started going to her for advice. I still prefer to speak to my dad though because he is as analytic and logical as I am. My mom always noted that we both share the same engineer brain. I've always been very stubborn and hard headed and independent, which didn't mesh with living under her rules. Especially when she made rules and punishments based solely on spite or emotion without any logic or reason behind it. I don't know if things would have been any different if she hadn't read my journals, or if I hadn't known that she had read them. But I might have grown to respect her a bit more, or respect her rules or her house. Or at least played the game until I turned 18. But when that happened, I lost all respect for her and even now she doesn't have it completely back. While a part of it is the huge betrayal of my trust, a side effect was I learned a lot about her views on things and I fundamentally don't agree with them. We look at sex, relationships, and self-esteem and self-worth very differently. For example, she looks at hook up sex (sex with people you aren't in a completely committed relationship) as a personality trait. Like those actions define who I am. Rather than my personality defining the actions I choose to make. Each equally contributed to my resentment of her through my high school years. I probably would've been rebellious, but I played a good game in high school with my teachers and mentors and bosses while I was actively aggressive and hateful to her. I didn't even try to not get caught. I didn't respect her at all and didn't care what she thought of me. I saw that I was hurting her when I came home drunk or stayed over and a guys house or went riding on a motorcycle and I think I got a sick, twisted pleasure from that. Revenge, I guess. It's pretty horrible thinking about it now.I know I would have been more willing to talk to her (eventually) about things going on in my life
I don't know if you read poetry much, is, (how else can I shorten your handle, haha?) but I have one for you. One of my faves.
I did until I was about 14 and discovered that my mom had read it. It severely broke me. I burned them all after that, which makes me a bit sad because I'd like to read what my 14 year old brain thought. I was a bit sex-obsessed. Not much has changed, although it isn't the main focus of my thoughts these days. I had had sex with a guy I had been best friends with since we were 9. I had also hooked up with a guy who I managed to continue hooking up with until I met my current boyfriend. I think it would be fascinating to read what I thought of sex and relationships and myself at that point. I remember some, but I'm sure what I think I thought has slowly changed as I've grown. Now I carry around a journal that has my to-dos. I go through about one a month. But it doesn't have any emotion in it. Just heaps and heaps of lists.
I'm sorry that happened. Oh, jeez. virtual hug
(First post get.) Oh boy, this caught me at a fun time. I'm currently using DayOne for journalling on OS X, but I think I'm slowly switching over to my own frankenstein creation which is basically a ruby front-end to a pretty simple sqlite database. The point of this all being that most of the day I'm at a computer or other device and I can quickly pop open a terminal window, jot something down, and close it again. One problem I have is that my ideal journal/logging application/system/thing should take care of: * Regular, automated (or semi-automated) activity logging * A spark file for writing * Daily activity/task/note logging * A collection box for all non-actionable thoughts * A place for longer-form writing that I just want to get out right then and there * and also, a way of retrieving all of this data in a sane manner (which is where a computerised journal wins). So I guess the point of all this is to keep a record of what I'm doing and reflect on it in the short term (e.g. "What did I accomplish this week?"), but with a bonus of being able to reflect on it longer-term as well ("What was I going through a year ago today?"). This gentleman seems to have a pretty cool journalling system that popped up on my radar, and that's what's got me thinking about the best way to record all this stuff recently. If you want to keep it updated daily, perhaps a service like FollowUpThen could help? If you check your email a few times during the day, a well-timed email reminding you to write stuff down might help.I keep a journal with little aim or discipline. I'm hoping to take after the practice with more direction
I still haven't figured out a better way than my pen & paper journal that I now keep. I've tried every app out there, but it seems like the best way is still the pen and paper for what I want to accomplish. My life revolves around work - therefore what I take notes on is to do lists. My personal life is now a list as well. Namely to do lists for work, personal life (groceries,etc), freelance projects, job #2, personal worky stuff (updates to my website, etc), hubski. I'll note here that "journalling" in the truest sense of the word is now kept track through facebook. Feelings, photos, what I was doing, are mostly displayed and recalled later there. Deep interpersonal thoughts and feelings are lost now. I am considering that it may be important to have a personal reflection journal, but it's not a priority of mine right now. I have Evernote which works for somethings, especially links and articles that I want to find later. But for work, work, and more work, there is no easy way to have the to-do lists with notes that get added throughout the project. Plus that satisfying strikethrough when it's been completed. I am done, but when I need to recall what it was or the folder # or what size screen it was on, I can easily go back and find it. Whenever I have these lists on the computer I end up deleting them to clean up (therefore no recall) or the note taking process when I'm in a meeting or having a quick conversation never makes it to the computer. I personally find it rude and annoying when people are staring at their phones and typing furiously during meetings or desk conversations. That said, I'm sure there is a better way, but every time I try to switch it fails miserably and I don't have time to miss things on my lists.
So I have a few disconnected things to contribute, and this reply has been sitting open on my computer for the best part of a day... It sure has its advantages - for instance, I spent 9am-10am yesterday working on ways to refine my current journalling software, rather than doing actual work. I can't really get quite that sidetracked with pen+paper (or at least, I can't do it as much - I'm sure I could still waste time optimising the correct note-taking procedure &c). I'm assuming you've seen this then? It's basically lists + some additional bit and bobs to keep things on track. While it was originally made for the 2000s-era manger, a decent amount of it is applicable to modern knowledge work, which is handy. The above-linked bullet journal also deals with a lot of the whole "I need to do these four things today" while also allowing for more stuff to come along and even giving you some room for daylogging. I think there's a definite divide between "actionable" stuff (project notes, lists of next actions, shopping lists) and "reference/archive" (thoughts and reactions, mementos, etc.). And while you can combine the two, I can't help but think that decent archive material is going to get lost amongst the monotony of everyday short-term notes, and things you need to do are going to lose their urgency jammed in between recollections and stuff. I've tried note-taking on my iPad, but I've found the same - I can make quicker, more natural notes (still) on paper, plus I feel less like I'm blocking people out. If it's an important meeting I generally make sure I transcribe my notes onto the computer (often a Dropbox folder shared with the other people on the project). Actionable items end up on the task list, so I'm not paging through minutes trying to work out what to do later on. When faced with a problem in my list-making/task-doing regime, I tend to go "I know, I'll make a regularly-running shell script to take care of that!". Then, in Larry Walls, I have two problems, not one.I still haven't figured out a better way than my pen & paper journal that I now keep. I've tried every app out there, but it seems like the best way is still the pen and paper for what I want to accomplish.
My life revolves around work - therefore what I take notes on is to do lists. My personal life is now a list as well. Namely to do lists for work, personal life (groceries,etc), freelance projects, job #2, personal worky stuff (updates to my website, etc), hubski.
Journalling
Whenever I have these lists on the computer I end up deleting them to clean up (therefore no recall) or the note taking process when I'm in a meeting or having a quick conversation never makes it to the computer. I personally find it rude and annoying when people are staring at their phones and typing furiously during meetings or desk conversations.
For me, so much if journaling was visual. I would draw pictures in the margins etc. This was back in 2000-2003. Now that in look back, those drawings are as important to me as the words that accompany them. Is there a way to do something similar with the journal programs you've seen?
Preface: I'm a terrible artist, this probably colours my approach to visual art in journals (i.e. I don't tend to do it). If I were a decent artist and drawing stuff each day, I'd be tempted either to keep a separate paper journal for sketching, or maybe to do sketches in something with removable/tear-out and scan them at the end of each day. If I just liked a more visual form of writing things down, I'd probably end up with something similar to the bullet journal link above. I do have a big (probably too big, really) Moleskine softcover book for when I'm jotting down ideas that can't be summed up accurately in plain text, but things tend to get lost in there quickly. I guess I just really like the ability to search for every entry I've written where I've mentioned flaming goats and have them all appear in less than a second, is all.
I've been fortunate in that I write a TON of music/songs. I can listen to old tracks and it's just as powerful as reading my old journal entries. Just last night I found an old tune, maybe from 5 years ago, and listened to it. It immediately took me back to where I was when I wrote it, both physically and mentally. This morning I was looking through old youtube videos and found this song that I wrote about a bulimic girl I knew that was also a devout born-again christian. -Sort of like reading a journal entry about her. But I've yet to write a song about "flaming goats," maybe it's time I do!I guess I just really like the ability to search for every entry I've written where I've mentioned flaming goats and have them all appear in less than a second, is all.
I don't have that desire, mostly because I never write about flaming goats, but also because of the serendipity of manually searching through my journals. Its fun and always leads me to discover something I've forgotten about. It is a time-suck though. I'll end up spending hours nostalgically looking through old journals in search of "that one poem I wrote one night after the bar..."
Which is fine and even desirable for writing/creative endeavours! Suggests that it might be a good idea to have different systems for this vs. what insomniasexx describes (i.e. task management/project tracking) vs. "journalling" i.e. writing down thoughts on stuff or reactions to events. I realise this is probably a subconscious result of a QDB entry I read some time ago, that's stuck with me.I don't have that desire, mostly because I never write about flaming goats, but also because of the serendipity of manually searching through my journals. Its fun and always leads me to discover something I've forgotten about. It is a time-suck though. I'll end up spending hours nostalgically looking through old journals in search of "that one poem I wrote one night after the bar..."
But I've yet to write a song about "flaming goats," maybe it's time I do!
-Funny.The internet is a beautiful place....
"Because no matter what kind of twisted freak you are, you've got a friend out there :D
You could ask the internet "Find people who have sex with goats on fire."
And internet will ask you, "What kind of goats?"
I do. I write a few times a week. Just like a page at a time. It's mostly just how I'm feeling, what's going on, and mostly a place to rant about my current troubles or my current pressing challenges in my life. I'm a very positive person all day everyday, but everyone has doubts, questions themselves from time to time, and challenges. My writing is my outlet for that stuff.
I kept journals from the time I was maybe, 14 until I was around 21. I'm not entirely sure why I stopped. Most likely I filled the one I had and never bought another one. Mostly they were filled with ideas for stories and poems and doodles. I'd go through periods where I'd describe something that struck me during the day in as much detail as I could muster. I'd also do writing exercises in them. I have no idea where most of them are. Now, I end up writing stuff on my note taking app, which reminds me, they've sent me a notice that they will no longer be continuing service, so I have to find a new one that I like. If I'm not putting notes into my phone, I write on lots of small scraps of paper, which I then transfer to blank documents on my computer where they either turn into something or don't. I often end up putting them through the wash because I forget I put them in my pockets. Here is an example of a scrap of paper on my desk (there is a pile):
I think those have all ended up in something or other in the past month. I'm not naturally inclined toward organization, but writing has definitely helped me improve on that. Things make more sense when I can see them on paper. Riot grrrls -> Riot moms?
Soon the ground will be filled
with color
I knew there would be boogers
I use OhLife (premium! because I like the service). It emails me every day with a random entry from the past, and I just reply to that email to submit my journal entry for the day. I write mostly for therapeutic reasons and to keep a personal history of what I was thinking / feeling. I like seeing an old entry every day and remembering "oh yeah, I remember when that happened". Gives me some perspective... I've also thought about doing sentiment analysis on my old journal entries and seeing how that changes over time.
I have tried many times to make journaling a regular habit, but I never seem to maintain the habit for very long. Instead, I have just created a folder on my computer and when a particular mood strikes me or there is a memorable event in my life, I type up my thoughts. Since I can type much faster than I can write, I have found this to be a more effective means of keeping my thoughts in order. It's wonderful to be able to go back and see how I felt at a given point in time. I wish I had the discipline to make journal writing a dedicated part of my day everyday.
I keep 6 journals: a children journal, a health journal, a journal of life in my new country, an art journal, a journal of my business endeavors, and a personal journal. They are for the record, for therapy and for the record, to keep my family informed, for the record, for the record, and for myself. I'm totally hooked on journaling. I now feel like I've got to write it down or it didn't happen. Two of my journals are public, I journal on blogspot quite a bit.
I have three or four, all used at once for different things. One for writing writing, one for more typical journal stuff (free-form thoughts, recounting things that have happened), one for brief thoughts and notes, and one for sketches and visual things. I need all of them. I feel uncomfortable not having all of them on me (and the smaller one for brief notes must be in my pocket). I have a specific pen I have to write with, too.
I've always liked the idea of keeping a journal, but my life is too mundane and repetitive to keep a detailed log of daily happenings, so I gave myself the goal of writing something down every time a new, interesting, fresh thought strikes me. That's one of my criteria. I also write stuff down if I'm at some new territory, emotion-wise, and I need to document the intensity of that emotional state. I don't make writing in it a chore; my entries are spaced irregularly. I've gone months without writing, then written for three days straight, then abandoned the journal for a few days, and written a sentence. It all depends on how life's going and the track my mind follows during a given time period. I find that I make most of my entries at odd hours in the nighttime (when most of my most interesting thoughts occur, lol).