Anyone here keep a Journal of sorts?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I just recently started to write again, something that I stopped doing shortly after college. It's amazing to me how much of a difference it has made to my day. Its easy to see why I did this for so long and not so easy to understand why I stopped. I was curious if many people here keep some variation of this and if so do you use your computer or rather write it down on paper? I dont necessarily mean a log of your daily activities but rather your opinions, frustrations, or anything you feel the need to get out.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 23
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Playmaker

    I just recently started to write again, something that I stopped doing shortly after college. It's amazing to me how much of a difference it has made to my day. Its easy to see why I did this for so long and not so easy to understand why I stopped. I was curious if many people here keep some variation of this and if so do you use your computer or rather write it down on paper? I dont necessarily mean a log of your daily activities but rather your opinions, frustrations, or anything you feel the need to get out.



    From 97 through 2003, I kept a daily journal of about 1000-2000 words per entry. I'd print it off at the end of the year and bind it.



    I've stopped for the past year simply because my routine has gotten screwed up and I don't have time to go to the coffee shop in the morning and write.



    I miss it.
  • Reply 2 of 23
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    The difference between a journal and a diary is that a journal is intended to be read by others at some time, while a diary is not.



    In that case, I keep a journal online.
  • Reply 3 of 23
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    Me too.



    Midwinter still hasn't linked to my fabulous insights on life and Beyonce.
  • Reply 4 of 23
    dude! get with the times! blog!



    http://www.intarweb-master.blogspot.com



    thats mine
  • Reply 5 of 23
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ShawnJ

    Me too.



    Midwinter still hasn't linked to my fabulous insights on life and Beyonce.




    No, but I did write the Democratic National Convention Drinking Game.
  • Reply 6 of 23
    I'm going to start a journal soon... I finally decided on a digital option. I'm going to use this software (MacJournal)

    http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/



    Really like the way it works. Kudos to the developer!



    I'm planning on keeping it mostly digital, but will probably hand-write about 3-4 entries/year (so that future generations can see how sloppy my handwriting was!). I'll insert pictures, etc. and probably print it every six months or so and get it bound into a hardcover book of some sort. I'm really looking forward to it.



    Now that my 15" PowerBook is coming, I'll have a mobile tool to keep the journal on while I'm out and about as well. Good times!
  • Reply 7 of 23
    midwintermidwinter Posts: 10,060member
    Oops. I forgot to point out that while not writing about Beyoncé, I wrote The Republican National Convention Drinking Game first.
  • Reply 8 of 23
    shawnjshawnj Posts: 6,656member
    I would enjoy reading Groverat's blog if he ever regularly updated it..



    ...or a few funny quips from BRussell's blog if had one



    ...maybe a bit of bunny blogging by Shetline



    ...Fellowship's unique, well, what I can only describe as Fellowshippery/



    ...Applenut's crazy college life at Berkeley



    ...Crazychester and Powerdoc, too.



    ...Splinemodel because a tall, skinny, distance running, campus streaking, princeton matriculating, southern florida-living guy has to have some interesting perspective on things.



    You guys should all blog.
  • Reply 9 of 23
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    When I was a kid I had a journal. I'm not sure if it's still somewhere to find or if I threw it away.



    I remember it started to feel like something of a chore writing it. Also I think I might not have liked myself at that time. It's certainly an obstacle to writing if you think you're not going to like reading that stuff later. BTW, who are you guys writing for? Yourself, now? Yourself, in the future? Kids, or grandkids, in the future?



    It seems either you write lots of boring, repetitive stuff in the journal and waste time doing so, or you only record the highlights and then the journal doesn't really represent what your life was really like at the time. I also have a sort of a dislike for a spotty journal, so if there ever is a break from writing, I feel I should fill in the meantime when I start writing again, and that's a lot of work, sort of.



    There are many things that I have grown to like and find useful only after trying them out a few times. Taking a calendar in real use, for example, took 1) Paper calendar, 2) Palm, 3) Paper calendar again, 4) iCal over a few years before I really started using calendar. Maybe I should try writing a journal again?
  • Reply 10 of 23
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    Tough childhood, huh? Glad you pulled out of it. Those types of journals would be the most interesting to read.



    Nah, not tough in the way you assume and almost certainly not interesting. Some people are able to be depressed without a good reason. I'm one of them.
  • Reply 11 of 23
    "I've thought about writing a journal before, and I've written about five entries in the last five years, so I don't think I'll ever be disciplined enough to do it on a regular basis. But I will always have my old emails as an excellent record. How long until we get collections of emails being published as a form of literature?"



    I think some people over at Enron already tried that

  • Reply 12 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gon

    When I was a kid I had a journal. I'm not sure if it's still somewhere to find or if I threw it away.



    I remember it started to feel like something of a chore writing it. Also I think I might not have liked myself at that time. It's certainly an obstacle to writing if you think you're not going to like reading that stuff later. BTW, who are you guys writing for? Yourself, now? Yourself, in the future? Kids, or grandkids, in the future?



    It seems either you write lots of boring, repetitive stuff in the journal and waste time doing so, or you only record the highlights and then the journal doesn't really represent what your life was really like at the time. I also have a sort of a dislike for a spotty journal, so if there ever is a break from writing, I feel I should fill in the meantime when I start writing again, and that's a lot of work, sort of.



    There are many things that I have grown to like and find useful only after trying them out a few times. Taking a calendar in real use, for example, took 1) Paper calendar, 2) Palm, 3) Paper calendar again, 4) iCal over a few years before I really started using calendar. Maybe I should try writing a journal again?




    It can definatly become a chore at times and thats usually when I quit for a while. I generally write everything on paper because it seems to be less distracting and I can keep one Journal under the seat of my car, anoher on my desk at home, and the occasional word doc that gets crammed away into a folder on my PB.



    I guess that the majority of the things I write about are just general perceptions of my life and overall environment. I dont have any master plan on who I am going to let read it some day (not that I would have any problem letting anyone read it) but rather feel like it helps me to put things into perspective. I love to go back and read old entrys from when I was in college in Missouri. It helps me remember what my life was like and the range of emotions I had at the time. These days its a lot of introspective views on my career.
  • Reply 13 of 23
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    If I start making a journal again, it'll definitely be in electronic form. At some point I realized paper's not for me because it's (by nature) unmodifiable, unsearchable, disorganized, and I have never been a good at organizing physical stuff. Only recently I started using paper again in the way all that doesn't matter - disposable form. I have a tiny notebook where I make notes. Time to time I read the notes, fill them into my calendar and to-do list on the computer, rip off the pages and throw them away. Paper's very cool for this sort of straight in-out processing, drawing small maps and other things. I don't foresee having a PDA again anytime soon.



    I am not a public person. I can imagine writing short blog entries which are also a part of the journal, and then writing nonpublic parts for my use only, but no way a "journal" of mine would be public.



    When I last wrote a journal (I recall I actually tried it couple of years back.. didn't remember up till now) I did it in electronic form. I had a pile of text files, per day, and I wondered if I could put some kind of keywords in there so I find things later. It would be cool if, for instance, I could search for everything that's related to a certain person - it's just that often in the actual journal entries it varies, there might be no name, it might be a nickname, and in my language the name could be twisted into a different form when it's used in a certain context. Using the whole name as a keyword would solve that. But then, it's not necessarily a person I want to find later, it could be something else.. It's hard to foresee in advance what I could be looking for later, and it would also be a bother putting in lots of keywords.



    Any thoughts on this?
  • Reply 14 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gon

    If I start making a journal again, it'll definitely be in electronic form. At some point I realized paper's not for me because it's (by nature) unmodifiable, unsearchable, disorganized, and I have never been a good at organizing physical stuff. Only recently I started using paper again in the way all that doesn't matter - disposable form. I have a tiny notebook where I make notes. Time to time I read the notes, fill them into my calendar and to-do list on the computer, rip off the pages and throw them away. Paper's very cool for this sort of straight in-out processing, drawing small maps and other things. I don't foresee having a PDA again anytime soon.



    I am not a public person. I can imagine writing short blog entries which are also a part of the journal, and then writing nonpublic parts for my use only, but no way a "journal" of mine would be public.



    When I last wrote a journal (I recall I actually tried it couple of years back.. didn't remember up till now) I did it in electronic form. I had a pile of text files, per day, and I wondered if I could put some kind of keywords in there so I find things later. It would be cool if, for instance, I could search for everything that's related to a certain person - it's just that often in the actual journal entries it varies, there might be no name, it might be a nickname, and in my language the name could be twisted into a different form when it's used in a certain context. Using the whole name as a keyword would solve that. But then, it's not necessarily a person I want to find later, it could be something else.. It's hard to foresee in advance what I could be looking for later, and it would also be a bother putting in lots of keywords.



    Any thoughts on this?




    I'm not sure if I have any advice on how to organize your text files. That is one reason I just keep mine in notebooks. And as I mentioned before I get distracted when I am on my PowerBook and trying to write...for instance: I'll be writing an entry where I'll bring up a resteraunt I might have taken a date to. Next thing you know I have a browser open and am researching the resteraunt. Then by that time I have emersed myself into a historical research project of resteraunts in that area, it's crazy. I think they sell drugs for this type of shit.
  • Reply 15 of 23
    i have a blog, i like it because i can look backover my life (i write in it almost daily) and really see where my head was at then and now, and i find that to be really cool.
  • Reply 16 of 23
    gongon Posts: 2,437member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Playmaker

    I'm not sure if I have any advice on how to organize your text files. That is one reason I just keep mine in notebooks. And as I mentioned before I get distracted when I am on my PowerBook and trying to write...for instance: I'll be writing an entry where I'll bring up a resteraunt I might have taken a date to. Next thing you know I have a browser open and am researching the resteraunt. Then by that time I have emersed myself into a historical research project of resteraunts in that area, it's crazy. I think they sell drugs for this type of shit.



    I've been there. I know what it's like



    Well, it's not like special searching is mandatory, it'll still be better than having the thing on paper. At simplest, I could keep everything in one textfile and have a date in front of every entry, nothing more. Or separate textfiles for each day's entry, that wouldn't be difficult to write or organize either but it would be a bit harder to browse.



    When I think more broadly, searching is just a part of it, I'd like it to be machine parseable like XML so more operations are available later on. In fact, if it was XML I think it should be easy to have public-private entries mixed up while writing and it would be entirely mechanical to pull out a web page of the public parts.

    I've done it again.. now I wanna learn XML.



    There's something that further complicates things. There are a lot of data that could be said to relate to the journal. Photos, e-mail, documents, even calendar contents. The perfect journal would allow direct access to that sort of digital context.

    But I think a simple and good compromise would be to be able to manually add files. If there were directories uniquely named with date, like '20041130/' where you could put the most essential photo or other file, you could then link from the journal file for caption or to place the file in context, or just throw the files in there without explanation.
  • Reply 17 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Gon

    I've been there. I know what it's like



    Well, it's not like special searching is mandatory, it'll still be better than having the thing on paper. At simplest, I could keep everything in one textfile and have a date in front of every entry, nothing more. Or separate textfiles for each day's entry, that wouldn't be difficult to write or organize either but it would be a bit harder to browse.



    When I think more broadly, searching is just a part of it, I'd like it to be machine parseable like XML so more operations are available later on. In fact, if it was XML I think it should be easy to have public-private entries mixed up while writing and it would be entirely mechanical to pull out a web page of the public parts.

    I've done it again.. now I wanna learn XML.



    There's something that further complicates things. There are a lot of data that could be said to relate to the journal. Photos, e-mail, documents, even calendar contents. The perfect journal would allow direct access to that sort of digital context.

    But I think a simple and good compromise would be to be able to manually add files. If there were directories uniquely named with date, like '20041130/' where you could put the most essential photo or other file, you could then link from the journal file for caption or to place the file in context, or just throw the files in there without explanation.




    I definatly think you're on to something...although it would need to have parental controls to keep me from wondering off the beaten path
  • Reply 18 of 23
    adamraoadamrao Posts: 175member
    The organization and finding aspect is what led me to start considering this:

    http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/



    Now I'm completely sold on it. You can export it as Word, RTF, HTML or TXT. So, when you start wanting to print and bind (if you do that sort of thing), you could easily import it into Word, do some formatting, etc. and have a nice document ready for printing. Want to post it online? Export it as HTML.



    Not bad for freeware.
  • Reply 19 of 23
    giaguaragiaguara Posts: 2,724member
    kept a paper diary as kid. my mum "lost" it at some point while "cleaning" my room which didn't do any good on that.



    now keeping a blog, and an older that i dont want to die .. more or less same purpose with those 2. process firstly to myself whats up in life, get free of frustrations etc .. then everything else. since i got free of my frustrations, those will eventually change by content.



    and then anotehr which is not mine only, so it should not matter who writes / wrote in that last one. (and sorry, l=no links here = find it yourself).
  • Reply 20 of 23
    Quote:

    Originally posted by adamrao

    The organization and finding aspect is what led me to start considering this:

    http://homepage.mac.com/dschimpf/







    that's really really cool!!
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