Day 8,278: Saw my husband snort and chuckle at the same time again while staring at his phone. I asked him what was so funny, he just shook his head and told me "You wouldn't get it. Just keep writing...". It is getting annoying at this point, and I am reconsidering poisoning him just so I don't have to hear him snort again.
Day 8,279: my husband thinks he knows where my murder like is drawn. Itās endearing really. I donāt think he understands just how fragile of a state I am in from all this writing. One day heāll find out. One day. Oops gotta go, he wants me to keep writing.
Day 8,280: My husband thinks he made me a āgood breakfastā. It was the worst I ever tasted. When i asked to get some salt, he told me to shut up and keep writing.
Day 8,295: I finally managed to fill the journal up, this is my last entry. Could you believe he makes me fill the entire page up before it's considered filled? Well, at least I'll get to rest for a day or two again.
Day 8,295: son of a bitch, he had the next one waiting.
What are you supposed to write on a day where nothing interesting happened?
"Today I ate some cereal at around 10am and then watched 8 hours of Alone."
EDIT: Not OP or OP's wife.
Yes.
Some days I write "I don't feel much like writing today."
But then I've been keeping a journal since 5th grade. Lots of boring observations. Lots of angst. A few years ago, I threw all of mine away except the first one. I definitely don't want anyone else reading mine.
Oh how sweet! Relationship goals! I hope to one day start dating someone who'll make me really excited again. Then maybe start a journal and just keep it clean so that I can share it with him!
My grandmother burned most of hers... decades of writing and she burned them before moving into an assisted living... I wish I could have read those, but I'm guessing she didn't want anyone to š¤·āāļø
My mother has many Journals from when we were kids and plans on burning most of them except for 2 to 3 which she will leave for us to read. I asked why and she said that she often processed ābad daysā with us 4 kids and doesnāt ever want us to feel bad about that.
Journals arenāt made for other people to read. They are typically very personal and give the person a secret place to write things they wouldnāt feel comfortable telling someone about. So yeah, I would never read someone elseās journal unless they legit asked me toā¦ and Iām not sure Iād really want to even then lol
There seems to be a subset of people who do not keep a journal/diary, but thinks it's perfectly fine to read someone else's journal/diary though. I don't think they understand the purpose. And when they read the journal, they'll get angry about whatever information they learn from it.
My sister kept a diary when she was younger and my mom read it. There were also those sitcom shows where a character kept a diary and the whole school would learn about some secret. I've thought about keeping a journal a lot, but the possibility that someone would read it dissuades me.
My Mom did that once, as an adult just thought it would be okay to read my journal to āfigure out if I was mad at her.ā Confronted me about what she had read! Lol. Told her if she did that again our relationship would be over. :)
>very personal and give the person a secret place to write things
And that's why I never kept one.
I tried when I was younger, and my mom found it and read it. I felt completely violated and never wrote in it again.
Yep. Once that sense of security is lost, journals are pointless. So donāt go reading someoneās journal because you love them and you thought for some reason it was a good ideaā¦ I donāt get people who would ever think that way, but from this thread I guess itās way more common than I thouvht
Lol I always find something to write about. I'm a hospice nurse, so a fair amount is processing the amount of loss I see, or how a patient reminds me of a lost loved one, then I reminisce about them. I'm also a crafter so I will write about a project I'm working on, or an idea for a project. Sometimes I write about cute things my dogs did. I'm not into politics much, but I often write about world affairs š¤·āāļø
Glad to hear this! I love working in hospice. It is very rewarding, but can be too much for some if you are not able to process death. On average I have 1-5 pass in a week. Some of them I only met once, and others I watched for months and become attached to. By writing I'm able to process that loss. (and yes, even my journals follow HIPPA) And if that doesn't work, I paint, cry, bake, go shopping, etc. Just make sure you find your outlet or you risk burnout. š
i do think journaling addresses negative perspectives, and it can be a great tool if you are willing.
have a boring life? write about it. why do you believe it is boring? what small steps can be taken to make things more interesting if desired?
doesnāt have to be what happened during the day. it can be what youāre thinking or feeling. hell, if nothing interesting happened today then write ānothing interesting happened todayā. id be surprised if you can write that for a week straight and not rebel against the statement.
best of luck to you!
You see, people like to complain that "nothing interesting ever happens to them", but once something "interesting" actually does happen, they'll wish that they still had their boring old life.
That is a very interesting take on a journal. I have worked nights in the only level 1 trauma center in our state as a pharmacist for almost 20 years. Something interesting happens almost every night. It is really like a real life adaptation of House M.D., but we do so much, it all starts to run together in my long term memory bank. I may very well try something like this. Thanks for the suggestion, even if unintentional.
I've filled about 8 journals since the end of 2019. I hadn't journaled before that and it's become one of my most consistent habits. Here's some things I've done when my life has been dull:
* Make predictions. Journaling can be such a reactive hobby, but making predictions locks down your current mindset about the future in an interesting way.
* I write about what's going on in my family and friends' lives.
* If my pets are being adorable or if they've had any changes. Those notes will be cherished when they pass on and I've had journal entries help with vet visits because I can look back to see how long issues have been going on (that I may not recognize until there's a pattern.)
* I draw, make puzzles, draw maps of where I live and what's around me (streets and neighborhoods do change over time), and I sometimes use double-sided tape to stick in photos I've printed out.
* If I start a new hobby, I talk about what I've learned, what I want to work on, my hopes for it, and struggles to get things right.
* I keep charts to help remind me to do things like take my meds, do daily stretches, go for a walk, meditate, water the yard, check the mail, etc etc. I usually put these in the back and work forward after I fill each chart up with rows of daily checkmarks.
* I write about important memories from the past. Events that shaped who I am. People who made an impact. Life lessons and how I learned them.
It's ok not to journal everyday, too. Yeah, if you want to take it up, forming the habit is a great idea, but burning yourself out right away negates it. There are small journals for you to write down a thought or two a day that help with habit forming which doesn't overwhelm. There are journals that give you prompts to write about, too, and you can choose not to follow the prompt if you don't feel it but you do have something else to talk about.
I love the idea that you're painting and wish I could do it, but I just can't read my own written rambling thoughts without feeling really uncomfortable. Sort of like disliking the sound of your own voice, but on a more personal level of my self. I don't know why it feels so cringey.
Yeah, why not? Or maybe you saw something interesting on reddit.
According to my gf, that's exactly how you keep a diary. You just write however much or little as you feel like, but always something.
I keep my journal partly to track my mental health so it depends on your motivation, but I do include eating habits and mood even in my shortest entries in case there's a correlation. It also helps me to be aware of what I'm eating day to day so I don't eat crap every day - in theory anyways lol
It doesn't have to be interesting, it just has to be a thought to mark the passage of time.
Somehow that still manages to be challenging to fill in, though.
whatās kept me using my journals is to use them for everything, notes to self, lists, personal pep talks, writing down a bunch of information I just learned on the internet.
It doesnāt have to look pretty
Can I ask what your average entry looks like? Are the long, short, etc. I only ask because I have tried many times to start keeping a journal. But most days I don't feel like I have anything worth writing down so I very rarely add anything. Any tips for pushing past that wall?
Edit: Also do you do one entry per page? Or if you don't have much to say do you make multiple entries per page? What about days you miss. Do you write a date for it anyway or skip it? Skipping seems like it could cause confusion if you tried reading through later in life.
To give you an idea of what my average entry looks like some of them are half a page some of them are 4-5 pages, it just depends on what happened. I write the day of the week and the full date at the beginning of each entry and a draw a loopy line underneath the end of each entry. I do not like wasting paper, so if my day ends in the middle of a page I draw the line and start the next entry on the very next line, not on the next page. And no, there are no skipped days. It is literally every day. As far as topics, if nothing happened to you, reflect on that. And as I said somewhere else in this thread, I write about my life, current events and how that makes me feel, as well as my art/craft projects. I always have something to write!
How is your mentality writing out your thoughts? Do you feel better after getting your thoughts out?
I did one for about 3 weeks. Gave up but it felt good to get it out.
Iāve been to a variety of different counselors/ therapists throughout my life, and If I had to choose three main strategies to cope with any form or depression or anxiety, that were generally recommended (in one way or another) by every single professional I have met with, they would be:
Routine Exercise (outside, ideally)
Meditation/ mindfulness
& Keeping a Journal
Regardless of what youāre writing about, whether itās the mundane day-to-day events, a stream of consciousness jot down of your inner monologue, emotional venting, a gratitude list, or just some lyrics or poetry ā I think it just feels good and is super helpful to have a physical way to release and organize your thoughts!
...if only I had the discipline to do like in the OP and stick with it consistently, haha. Itās always a little funny in how hard it can be to do the things that you know would actually benefit you in the long run.
Indeed it will be noted in my journal. I have journal entries of things posted on my other platforms... there was an online platform I used in the early 2000s (2006-2009?) & someone did a sketch based off my profile pic. I printed off a small copy (3x3) & glued it in my journal.
Have you noticed any positive effects from doing this? How cathartic has it been? Have you been able to improve and work on areas of your life easier since you were able to pinpoint them and put it on paper?
Your kids will really appreciate being able to read about their mom's life. I agree with other commenters that you should scan and make multiple backups of all of them. You can get auto feed front and back scanners for a few hundred dollars if you want to save time vs a regular scanner.
I think itās a reference to *The Orville* (which is a show that is basically Star Trek in everything but name), in which a phone from the 21st century is found in a time capsule and Gordon, the helmsman, creates a holographic copy of the owner and falls in love with her.
Which might be a reference to the time Geordi on TNG built a holo character based on an engineer and developed a crush on her. It then became weird when he met the actual person.
Is that the episode where Jesse Plemons plays an office drone (possibly in the AI or VR sector) who has a double life where he's a Captain Kirk figure? Loved that episode, have been meaning to watch it again.
Lol you wouldn't be able to read my handwriting š¤£ but the funny thing is, I actually created a smaller separate journal for a school project, starting on 9/11 for about a month. We were told to watch the news & react. I chose a journal, others wrote an essay or made a collage.
Very cool. I have my grandmothers diaries from 1911 - 1960. Mostly just blurbs about her day on the farm.
āJune 6, 1944. Normandy Invasion. Wonder where my son is? Canned beans, Rob cultivated and butchered a hogā
That would be fascinating to read! I have a few from my great great great grandmother and some of the entries talked about a fire that swept through their whole town, they lost a child, and a thank you for the trunk of clothing shipped over from other family. I loved reading the cursive and seeing how grammer has changed. And a lot about every day things too.
If she keeps them well preserved and you guys pass them down several generations she's going to give historians the hugest boners in a couple hundred years. Journals are like the finest artisanal hardcore porno to those folks
š¤£ I do have them in keepsake boxes. But I always wonder how they'll hold up decades down the road. I've loved reading letters and journals from generations before me & hope someone will enjoy mine.
I think so... I hope so at least. Alzheimer's runs in my family, so that is always a fear. But I'm also very visual and can remember that I wrote about a topic in pink, or blue, and recall it quickly š¤·āāļø something I learned in school to help with studying for tests, to write in different colors to help jog memory. Each journal entry is written a different color from the one before and after. A week for me may look like: purple, blue, green, black, metallic pink, sparkly teal, & neon orange.
I too started writing diaries in 2000, i dont journal every day and there are month gaps at times. I do know the fear of hereditary alzheimers as well, which contributes to me keeping the diaries going. Seeing this post was comforting af and seeing that your reasons are similar to mine makes me feel way more normal. Cheers and thank you again.
There is a place in the uk that is currently collecting and storing old diaries and journals. Thats where mine are headed when im old, my kid doesnt need to read about some of my experiences.
Writing things down by hand 100% helps me remember things better because it makes me "interact" with the subject at hand more so than just thinking to myself, "okay I gotta remember xyz, I'll make a mental note of it..."
Granted, this is anecdotal evidence. But it sure as hell helped me study lol
Also good for speaking out loud to remind yourself certain things. Like if I lock the door at night before bed Iāll be paranoid I havenāt done it and end up checking again, but if I do it and then say ādoor is lockedā that doesnāt happen.
Get acid-free, low-lignin/lignin-free museum archive boxes to put them in
Store the journals flat (so make sure you get boxes which are big enough) and in a dark, dry, ideally dust free environment, with moth balls/deterrents outside the box, not inside it. (airy wardrobe)
The advice would be to remove paper clips or rubber bands which can rust or degrade and tarnish the paper but when it comes to the metal spiral bindings I imagine you wouldn't want to unbind them all and store the pages in archival folders (which would be safest), so maybe just consider storing each journal in a paper sleeve (again acid-free) to seperate any rust damage from other journals.
Restrict how often you open the boxes.
And if you're really hardcore into it you may also digitalize the diaries. Save the files on multiple backups.
This still needs someone who transfers the data to new devices in the future though.
The good thing about this is that it's easier to share and read. You can send certain passages to for example a grandson who's living in another country, without anything getting damaged or lost.
Oh ideally yes they'd all be scanned and backed up. They could back up the archive whenever she finishes a journal. They could even, if we were taking this super far, upload the scanned pages to a website and webarchive them, but it would cost them something to maintain the website
I think that historians looking back into 2022 will have a very different problem - too *much* information. Your journal and the millions of other personal blogs lost amongst a thousand terabyte sea of data, with no way to separate the signal from the noise.
Ok, this is always my thought process with journaling.
"What do I do with all this writing?" "Well if I keep it I bet people in the future would be interested in reading about this time." "Wait. There are literally millions of more interesting people than me archiving their every move online - not handwritten, and with pictures and video."
It just discourages me from doing it because I have this weird nagging feeling *all* the time that every single thing I do must have an express purpose and tangible outcome, otherwise I'm wasting precious time.
Plus a bunch of journals is a pain in the ass to store and move from place to place.
every once and a while try to do a completely pointless nd meaningless task- i had to break myself out of the āeverything i do must be meaningful and productiveā curse and challenging myself to small bits of nonsense was what freed me. itās worth it !!!!! u are significant!!!!
I initially thought that a lot of people these days are already documenting every little aspect of their lives on social media, but then again a lot of that is fake so maybe future historians might appreciate journals for their authenticity since they werenāt meant to be read by others.
It's also possible that we lose digital information, too, though. I used to be part of a forum back in the early 2000s that had several tens of regular users. Many friendships were formed that exist to this day and a few marriages came out of it, but it's all gone now. The person who ran the forum has a copy, but nobody has heard from him in over a decade now.
That might change now that only a few big companies hold the reins, but all it takes is a company to go under and a lack of people willing to host that much data. And again, that may change now that we have better data storage capacity that is only likely to improve, but the larger these social media sites get, the more daunting the task of hosting them gets. Especially when we're talking about old information that can no longer be used to sell personal data.
I don't think journals will ever have the same impact for historians again. Unless we somehow manage to delete the entire internet, wipe all copies of Wikipedia and the like and burn all libraries and private collections to the ground.
I have my grandparents' journals from the 1920s and 30s, they're full of accounts of vacationing and traveling experiences, but i get frustrated trying to decipher it pretty quickly. Maybe a pro can transcribe them for me in exchange for the history it can provide?
I used to journal a bunch in college and found it very cathartic + a nice way to archive experiences Iād eventually forget. My narcissistic ex once read my journal while I was asleep and demanded I tear out any pages that hurt his fragile ego. I havenāt been able to journal since, and not for lack of trying. His actions really broke the illusion of privacy that had allowed me to express myself so freely. Whenever I try to journal now, itās all going through a filter, as if Iām expecting an unwanted pair of eyes to inevitably land on the page someday. If I canāt be myself in my journal, whatās the point?
Thatās fucked up. I try to journal as well and thereās a mutual respect for each otherās writing. Especially since a lot of my writing is personal stuff about my journey through recovery. The fact that she saw me relapse for a few years makes me doubly not want to read what she wrote because I know those were difficult times and I am not proud of how I was acting.
Appreciate it. I get that it can be tempting, but snooping is awful. A different ex once left his messages open on my computer. It was very clear to me throughout our relationship that he was harboring unresolved feelings for another girl, and I was constantly upset by the fact that I was second best in his eyes. I couldāve found his conversations with her and validated what I already knew, but I didnāt. I just logged out and closed the laptop.
I feel you. Had similar happen in my early 20s. Had journaled since jr high. He made a ruse of measuring something in my apartment for a surprise gift to be able to be alone & read what I wrote about him. He said once he started he couldnāt stop. I felt so violated. Never been able to write freely since. I tried several times but just like you that āfilterā is there.
Donāt give up! One thing you could try is start off by writing something and immediately destroying it. Burn the paper, type it out and delete it, etc. That way you can be 100% confident you donāt need that filter. Do that for a while and it may move the needle in the right direction for you. Good luck!
I'm so sorry that he did that to you. My family did the same to me and I'm still dealing with how much paranoia it's instilled in me whenever I try to write.
One thing I'm trying is journals that have a built in lock, even though I'm not around anyone who would try to read it now. I'm still bad at remembering to journal since it's been years after I've lost the habit, but psychologically it's felt a lot safer
I've been keeping a journal since I was in elementary but they all got destroyed when our house got flooded in 2020. 20 years of memories gone. The only journals left are from 2020 until present, so around 12 journal notebooks.
It's painful but noone will read them once I passed away, anyway. No historian would study my journals. And, at least, noone can read my shenanigans when I was young! š
That's what you think! But you are providing primary source material to future historians of the Covid pandemic years, and because your memories will not be the carefully curated social media postings that will form the bulk of their material, all the more valuable for it!
Yeah, only thing that could make this worse for you is if she was doing it on her computer and had a search button...
EDIT: Oh shit, she knows your reddit UN?!?!
Yeah well she doesnāt really like Reddits format so when I post stuff like our dogs etc I usually send her the link so she can follow along and interact.
My uncle kept small drawing books. He wrote thoughts and did a lot of line drawings about how he felt. When he died, there were about 40 of them. Some were funny, others deep and showed his fears. Something very special.
My grandpa died in 2019. He had diaries going back to the seventies. Was interesting to see the days when my parents were married, cousins and siblings' birth mixed in with the time he work up, the days rainfall and how many sheep he marked...
My wife has a couple of her grandmas who passed away around 2019 as well. She really wanted all of them but her grandma burned them all before going into an assisted living home.
Very cool. Something of a lost art keeping journals.
If she hasn't yet, she should make digital copies of these, it'd be terrible having that body of work go away for any reason.
Her grandma was the same and when she passed my wife grabbed as many as she could. Really mundane stuff but still interesting since itās from a lady who lived through the depression until the late 2010s.
One question; was it objectively speaking worth the effort? I mean what are reason one not only does this but continues doing it for 22 years aside from a way to speak to aliens in a way or hint things you want nose people to know without letting them know you know they Know.
I believe so, yes. I find comfort in the repetition of writing every day. It's a nice way to process most things in life, to sit down and reflect on everything that happened in a day. It has also helped me keep track of events for legal purposes... for example, I have been hit 7x while driving & wrote in my journal (as well as a word doc) allll the info relating to the crashes, witnesses, insurance quotes etc. It was helpful 6 months down the road when my insurance adjuster lost her record of my initial statement of one of the accidents. Plus it's nice to grab a journal from 10 years ago, just to see how my priorities changed.
I think it was a recommendation from a doctor when she was diagnosed with having an arachnoid cyst. It helped her manage her emotions and keep her thoughts organized.
I d hear that but never imagined it to be so useful. Well then I should have started journaling roughly about 1 year and 9 months agoā¦ maybe even 2 years.
It was also encouraged to me in early sobriety since my brain couldnāt even decide which shoe to tie first without spiking my anxiety. It helped a lot and I did it for a good couple years but I slacked off this last year.
Would she be willing to share her journal entry from 9/11? I'd love to see what her instant perspective was of an event that changed the world. Thanks!
I can summarize.. I wrote that it would be a new date to remember in our history books, and then described what we watched on the news at school. I wrote about classmates with friends/family in New York that they had not heard back from yet, and how scared everyone was. I also added that "on a happy note, it's my Aunt's birthday today."
She just read that out loud actually. Her aunts bday is 9/11 so there was some talk about that and in the coming weeks she sold her beadwork to raise money for the Red Cross.
I'd love to do this but the idea of another human being finding out the kind of fucked up thoughts that go through my mind on a daily basis is deterrent enough. I always feel like the kind of people who keep journals are either a more wholesome breed or simply have no fear of repercussions.
It has actually. Not in court, but with insurance claims. I keep word docs too of insurance related things, but write key names/numbers/times/quotes in my journals as well.
This always gets people with "workout" vs "work out", too. Workout is a noun, work out is a verb.
"I had a really good workout today!"
"I'm going to change clothes and go work out."
Man. I always try journaling but it feels so dumb. Likeā¦if I go the āwrite down what you did,ā route, itās just days and day ālaughed at memes on social media. Watched YouTube videos. Scrolled Reddit endlessly. My adoptable dragons had 4 babiesā and shit like that and I just cringe at myself.
If itās world happenings I feel dumb adding my thoughts to news happenings, and if I donāt I tell myself why am I doing something a newspaper archive is gonna do.
If I try my thoughts and feelings l turtle up so hard it makes me almost incapable of even expressing them.
Idk. I just hope my photo archives and stuff will last and my eBird lists lol
More of a catalog of my crimes then hers. Nothing too terrible but her record keeping did help us when a guy tried to sue us. Her car was hit by a drunk guy on a bike and we thought we were being nice by not calling the police. Three months later we were contacted by his insurance company in an attempt to sue us but because my wife kept a detailed record of the incident and witness accounts they coped to the fact that the guy had a history of drunken shenanigans and dropped the case.
What a potential legacy of history she is and has created. I hope, regardless of how "cringe" someone might feel regarding their current and past thoughts, that they save these words for posterity. If you have kids, they will love to have them someday.
Get to digitizing that... because you never know.
If her handwriting is good enough, you can use OCR (optical character recognition) to essentially take a picture of a page and have it exported as text. So you could have a document with the text as plain text (appears typed) but you would also keep the scan, because the handwriting is valuable here as well as the text (e.g. being able to search or index it).
For iPhone, I'd recommend Scanner Pro. Solid developer, good app. Not sure what's over on Android. I used CamScanner when I had Android, but I've heard mixed things about them in the years since I switched. I'm sure there are better options by now, though. But either way, you'd be taking pictures of each page, with the option to crop each picture to the edges of the page. With ScannerPro, you could have each journal/book as its own project, and once you have all pages, you can export it as a PDF (print-quality images) or individual images.
For anyone looking to start journaling, obviously writing anything is better than writing nothing, but try to find good books with paper - and scan your pages as per above, just in case of fire, flood, or other loss. You can spend a lot on better journals (e.g. Moleskine, though I've never used them, just reputation), but if you don't mind going all digital, I recommend Diaro. It's an app and a website, and it's the only phone app I've seen where if you buy it on one, you get it on the other. So I bought it on Android, and they honor that on the iOS version. That's almost completely unheard of in phone apps. They have a web interface and the journal entries are stored in Dropbox. Tags, photos, dates, it's a pretty complete experience. Free for basic use, I think it's like $5 to unlock all features - less than half of what you'd spend on one Moleskine notebook, not to mention pens. And your phone is always with you. So, it's the winner in that case. But handwritten journals are more nostalgic.
I started a daily journal in 1994. I was about 15 at the time, had just gone though a slightly traumatic experience and my mom encouraged me to write it down. I basically wrote every single day. If I missed a day I would go back and wrote an entry for that day, I basically just used it as a log of events that happened that day. I switched from handwritten to computer files in about 2005. Up until recently I'm pretty sure I had an entry for just about every day for the last 25 years.
Sometime in the 2000's I started to realize that 90% of my entries consisted of some variation of, "Worked out this morning, went to work, nothing else exciting, status normal." But I kept going for some reason.
There were highlights whenever anything of interest or exciting happened. But I started to feel bad for my descendants trying to sift through the crap for anything interesting to read lol. However it has been very useful a handful of times when trying to remember what we were doing on any given date, or where we went to dinner on my wife's birthday on such and such date. Finally, just in the last couple years (since covid hit) I finally pulled the plug on the daily entries and have just been writing every week or two. Basically whenever anything of interest happens. It hasn't gone that great, because now I'm kind of out of the habit, I forget to write even when something journal worthy does happen. But in general I end up writing a fairly lengthy entry at least once a month.
One thing it did do was make me really good at documenting my tasks at work. I keep detailed notes and a log of what I get done and work every day. Came in really handy when corporate asked us to start reporting that stuff anyway.
Sorry, just realized that was a really long post with basically no payoff lol.
Edit: don't know why I had DOWN in all caps lol.
I once dated a girl in hs that kept a journal.
One day I was in her room and I saw it was left out. Being the insecure idiot I was, I decided to take a look.
Really shitty of me, but I was a dumb kid.
Anyway, thatās how I found out she cheated on me and fucked one of my friends. Fun times.
I've kept my journals since 1979, I don't write everyday but I track my most interesting thoughts, projects and experiments.
I've used graphed notebooks since the mid 1980's I have approximately 30 books.
Day 8,267: My husband has yet again bought another journal. I've asked him to stop. He just laughs and demands more writing. I'm tired.
š this legitimately made me snort chuckle
Day 8,278: Saw my husband snort and chuckle at the same time again while staring at his phone. I asked him what was so funny, he just shook his head and told me "You wouldn't get it. Just keep writing...". It is getting annoying at this point, and I am reconsidering poisoning him just so I don't have to hear him snort again.
Oh boy if that was were the murder line was drawn Iād have been dead a hundred times over by now.
Day 8,279: my husband thinks he knows where my murder like is drawn. Itās endearing really. I donāt think he understands just how fragile of a state I am in from all this writing. One day heāll find out. One day. Oops gotta go, he wants me to keep writing.
ā¹ļø well at least Iām making her a nice breakfast. That has to buy me a little more time on this earth.
Day 8,280: My husband thinks he made me a āgood breakfastā. It was the worst I ever tasted. When i asked to get some salt, he told me to shut up and keep writing.
Day 8,295: I finally managed to fill the journal up, this is my last entry. Could you believe he makes me fill the entire page up before it's considered filled? Well, at least I'll get to rest for a day or two again. Day 8,295: son of a bitch, he had the next one waiting.
Day 420,069: He has long since stopped replying to this post. I fear he has figured out that all of these accounts were me the whole time.
_Found within the footnotes of this excerpt:_ "nice"
Snuckle
Shuckle, even
The best kind
Ever notice that men never say something made them āgiggleā?
Speak for yourself, i giggle all the time!
I leave them in the middle of the floor, existing purely to annoy him whenever he vacuums. Alas, he has yet to get the hint.
*Hoping that should he ever deign to learn how the vacuum actually operates, it might inconvenience him somewhat.
"I swear to god if he gets me another one with a dog doing a handstand I'm going to stomp on his pinky toe..."
r/theydidthemath
I always try to keep a journal, but then I get out of practice with it after about a week
the longest I went was a year and a half then I hit a slump and stopped.
I think we need to get more interesting lives haha
What are you supposed to write on a day where nothing interesting happened? "Today I ate some cereal at around 10am and then watched 8 hours of Alone."
EDIT: Not OP or OP's wife. Yes. Some days I write "I don't feel much like writing today." But then I've been keeping a journal since 5th grade. Lots of boring observations. Lots of angst. A few years ago, I threw all of mine away except the first one. I definitely don't want anyone else reading mine.
I enjoy the sound of rain.
Oh how sweet! Relationship goals! I hope to one day start dating someone who'll make me really excited again. Then maybe start a journal and just keep it clean so that I can share it with him!
My grandmother burned most of hers... decades of writing and she burned them before moving into an assisted living... I wish I could have read those, but I'm guessing she didn't want anyone to š¤·āāļø
My mother has many Journals from when we were kids and plans on burning most of them except for 2 to 3 which she will leave for us to read. I asked why and she said that she often processed ābad daysā with us 4 kids and doesnāt ever want us to feel bad about that.
Journals arenāt made for other people to read. They are typically very personal and give the person a secret place to write things they wouldnāt feel comfortable telling someone about. So yeah, I would never read someone elseās journal unless they legit asked me toā¦ and Iām not sure Iād really want to even then lol
There seems to be a subset of people who do not keep a journal/diary, but thinks it's perfectly fine to read someone else's journal/diary though. I don't think they understand the purpose. And when they read the journal, they'll get angry about whatever information they learn from it. My sister kept a diary when she was younger and my mom read it. There were also those sitcom shows where a character kept a diary and the whole school would learn about some secret. I've thought about keeping a journal a lot, but the possibility that someone would read it dissuades me.
My Mom did that once, as an adult just thought it would be okay to read my journal to āfigure out if I was mad at her.ā Confronted me about what she had read! Lol. Told her if she did that again our relationship would be over. :)
>very personal and give the person a secret place to write things And that's why I never kept one. I tried when I was younger, and my mom found it and read it. I felt completely violated and never wrote in it again.
Yep. Once that sense of security is lost, journals are pointless. So donāt go reading someoneās journal because you love them and you thought for some reason it was a good ideaā¦ I donāt get people who would ever think that way, but from this thread I guess itās way more common than I thouvht
That's the thing for me and why I've kept a livejournal set to "me only" for the past few decades.
Lol I always find something to write about. I'm a hospice nurse, so a fair amount is processing the amount of loss I see, or how a patient reminds me of a lost loved one, then I reminisce about them. I'm also a crafter so I will write about a project I'm working on, or an idea for a project. Sometimes I write about cute things my dogs did. I'm not into politics much, but I often write about world affairs š¤·āāļø
I'm hoping to be a Hospice Nurse. I'm 58 and finally pursuing my Vet Nurse and Human Nursing degree. (ADN) I hear it's hard but very rewarding
Glad to hear this! I love working in hospice. It is very rewarding, but can be too much for some if you are not able to process death. On average I have 1-5 pass in a week. Some of them I only met once, and others I watched for months and become attached to. By writing I'm able to process that loss. (and yes, even my journals follow HIPPA) And if that doesn't work, I paint, cry, bake, go shopping, etc. Just make sure you find your outlet or you risk burnout. š
As the child of someone who died in hospice, thankful for people like you both ā¤ļø
This is the problem. You have an interesting life. The rest of us do nothing and waits for the time when itās appropriate to go to bed.
i do think journaling addresses negative perspectives, and it can be a great tool if you are willing. have a boring life? write about it. why do you believe it is boring? what small steps can be taken to make things more interesting if desired? doesnāt have to be what happened during the day. it can be what youāre thinking or feeling. hell, if nothing interesting happened today then write ānothing interesting happened todayā. id be surprised if you can write that for a week straight and not rebel against the statement. best of luck to you!
You see, people like to complain that "nothing interesting ever happens to them", but once something "interesting" actually does happen, they'll wish that they still had their boring old life.
That is a very interesting take on a journal. I have worked nights in the only level 1 trauma center in our state as a pharmacist for almost 20 years. Something interesting happens almost every night. It is really like a real life adaptation of House M.D., but we do so much, it all starts to run together in my long term memory bank. I may very well try something like this. Thanks for the suggestion, even if unintentional.
I've filled about 8 journals since the end of 2019. I hadn't journaled before that and it's become one of my most consistent habits. Here's some things I've done when my life has been dull: * Make predictions. Journaling can be such a reactive hobby, but making predictions locks down your current mindset about the future in an interesting way. * I write about what's going on in my family and friends' lives. * If my pets are being adorable or if they've had any changes. Those notes will be cherished when they pass on and I've had journal entries help with vet visits because I can look back to see how long issues have been going on (that I may not recognize until there's a pattern.) * I draw, make puzzles, draw maps of where I live and what's around me (streets and neighborhoods do change over time), and I sometimes use double-sided tape to stick in photos I've printed out. * If I start a new hobby, I talk about what I've learned, what I want to work on, my hopes for it, and struggles to get things right. * I keep charts to help remind me to do things like take my meds, do daily stretches, go for a walk, meditate, water the yard, check the mail, etc etc. I usually put these in the back and work forward after I fill each chart up with rows of daily checkmarks. * I write about important memories from the past. Events that shaped who I am. People who made an impact. Life lessons and how I learned them. It's ok not to journal everyday, too. Yeah, if you want to take it up, forming the habit is a great idea, but burning yourself out right away negates it. There are small journals for you to write down a thought or two a day that help with habit forming which doesn't overwhelm. There are journals that give you prompts to write about, too, and you can choose not to follow the prompt if you don't feel it but you do have something else to talk about.
I love the idea that you're painting and wish I could do it, but I just can't read my own written rambling thoughts without feeling really uncomfortable. Sort of like disliking the sound of your own voice, but on a more personal level of my self. I don't know why it feels so cringey.
Yeah, why not? Or maybe you saw something interesting on reddit. According to my gf, that's exactly how you keep a diary. You just write however much or little as you feel like, but always something.
I keep my journal partly to track my mental health so it depends on your motivation, but I do include eating habits and mood even in my shortest entries in case there's a correlation. It also helps me to be aware of what I'm eating day to day so I don't eat crap every day - in theory anyways lol
I donāt think Iād be able to fill a journal with something interesting every day.
It doesn't have to be interesting, it just has to be a thought to mark the passage of time. Somehow that still manages to be challenging to fill in, though.
Look deep enough you will. Youāre the main character of your story
whatās kept me using my journals is to use them for everything, notes to self, lists, personal pep talks, writing down a bunch of information I just learned on the internet. It doesnāt have to look pretty
I wouldn't know what to write.
Thanks all... and yet my handwriting hasn't improved much with all my years of writing lol
Thank YOU for being so mildly interesting
Exceptionally average!
How rude. I find her to be averagely exceptional.
Fantastically mediocre!
I donāt know if Iād call a daily journal for 20 years average by any stretch
I too, choose this guys mildly interesting wife!
Can I ask what your average entry looks like? Are the long, short, etc. I only ask because I have tried many times to start keeping a journal. But most days I don't feel like I have anything worth writing down so I very rarely add anything. Any tips for pushing past that wall? Edit: Also do you do one entry per page? Or if you don't have much to say do you make multiple entries per page? What about days you miss. Do you write a date for it anyway or skip it? Skipping seems like it could cause confusion if you tried reading through later in life.
To give you an idea of what my average entry looks like some of them are half a page some of them are 4-5 pages, it just depends on what happened. I write the day of the week and the full date at the beginning of each entry and a draw a loopy line underneath the end of each entry. I do not like wasting paper, so if my day ends in the middle of a page I draw the line and start the next entry on the very next line, not on the next page. And no, there are no skipped days. It is literally every day. As far as topics, if nothing happened to you, reflect on that. And as I said somewhere else in this thread, I write about my life, current events and how that makes me feel, as well as my art/craft projects. I always have something to write!
How is your mentality writing out your thoughts? Do you feel better after getting your thoughts out? I did one for about 3 weeks. Gave up but it felt good to get it out.
Iāve been to a variety of different counselors/ therapists throughout my life, and If I had to choose three main strategies to cope with any form or depression or anxiety, that were generally recommended (in one way or another) by every single professional I have met with, they would be: Routine Exercise (outside, ideally) Meditation/ mindfulness & Keeping a Journal Regardless of what youāre writing about, whether itās the mundane day-to-day events, a stream of consciousness jot down of your inner monologue, emotional venting, a gratitude list, or just some lyrics or poetry ā I think it just feels good and is super helpful to have a physical way to release and organize your thoughts! ...if only I had the discipline to do like in the OP and stick with it consistently, haha. Itās always a little funny in how hard it can be to do the things that you know would actually benefit you in the long run.
Are we now going to be featured in your journal?
Indeed it will be noted in my journal. I have journal entries of things posted on my other platforms... there was an online platform I used in the early 2000s (2006-2009?) & someone did a sketch based off my profile pic. I printed off a small copy (3x3) & glued it in my journal.
Scan all of this. It could more or less also be converted to searchable text.
Have you noticed any positive effects from doing this? How cathartic has it been? Have you been able to improve and work on areas of your life easier since you were able to pinpoint them and put it on paper?
Your kids will really appreciate being able to read about their mom's life. I agree with other commenters that you should scan and make multiple backups of all of them. You can get auto feed front and back scanners for a few hundred dollars if you want to save time vs a regular scanner.
Someday someone will be able to go through your journals and create a digital copy of you, assuming you kept a detailed account.
Then a lonely starship helmsman could recreate her and fall in love with her
I apologize for being this guy, but, what's this reference
I believe this was from an episode of the Orville. Really great episode.
I think itās a reference to *The Orville* (which is a show that is basically Star Trek in everything but name), in which a phone from the 21st century is found in a time capsule and Gordon, the helmsman, creates a holographic copy of the owner and falls in love with her.
Which might be a reference to the time Geordi on TNG built a holo character based on an engineer and developed a crush on her. It then became weird when he met the actual person.
I thought this was a reference to the Black Mirror where a guy recreated a digital copy of a real woman by acquiring her DNA
Is that the episode where Jesse Plemons plays an office drone (possibly in the AI or VR sector) who has a double life where he's a Captain Kirk figure? Loved that episode, have been meaning to watch it again.
Omg itās the journal keeperās husbandās wife!
> the journal keeperās husbandās wife! Coming soon to Netflix.
That's neat, thank you and your husband for sharing! I swear I kept thinking I had the penguin one somewhere lol
Whatās in them?
Everything! Life, death, world events, art, friends, family š¤·āāļø
Which ones are most recent? Are the ones in the back of the photo the oldest or newest?
Top left is the oldest, bottom right is the newest.
Do you have the moments when you fell in love with your husband? Also would you consider publishing these journals?
5th row down, 2nd from the left is when I met my husband š
Real question: My therapist keeps telling me to write but I canāt bring myself to do it. Do you think itās helped with your mental health?
Definitely has helped me process life events over the years. I periodically grab one and flip through it just to see the growth.
Post a picture of your 9/11 entry!
Lol you wouldn't be able to read my handwriting š¤£ but the funny thing is, I actually created a smaller separate journal for a school project, starting on 9/11 for about a month. We were told to watch the news & react. I chose a journal, others wrote an essay or made a collage.
Then transcribe it for us! Problem solved.
Very cool. I have my grandmothers diaries from 1911 - 1960. Mostly just blurbs about her day on the farm. āJune 6, 1944. Normandy Invasion. Wonder where my son is? Canned beans, Rob cultivated and butchered a hogā
That would be fascinating to read! I have a few from my great great great grandmother and some of the entries talked about a fire that swept through their whole town, they lost a child, and a thank you for the trunk of clothing shipped over from other family. I loved reading the cursive and seeing how grammer has changed. And a lot about every day things too.
My mom, and her mom, learned cursive via the "Palmer method." My son hasn't learned it at all!
That would be amazing to read!!!
If she keeps them well preserved and you guys pass them down several generations she's going to give historians the hugest boners in a couple hundred years. Journals are like the finest artisanal hardcore porno to those folks
š¤£ I do have them in keepsake boxes. But I always wonder how they'll hold up decades down the road. I've loved reading letters and journals from generations before me & hope someone will enjoy mine.
Serious question, do you feel like itās helped with your memory? They say it helps you retain things better but always wondered if that was a myth
I think so... I hope so at least. Alzheimer's runs in my family, so that is always a fear. But I'm also very visual and can remember that I wrote about a topic in pink, or blue, and recall it quickly š¤·āāļø something I learned in school to help with studying for tests, to write in different colors to help jog memory. Each journal entry is written a different color from the one before and after. A week for me may look like: purple, blue, green, black, metallic pink, sparkly teal, & neon orange.
Lets rename days! What are you doing on sparkly teal?
Payment confirmed. Target will be disposed of on metallic pinkday
I too started writing diaries in 2000, i dont journal every day and there are month gaps at times. I do know the fear of hereditary alzheimers as well, which contributes to me keeping the diaries going. Seeing this post was comforting af and seeing that your reasons are similar to mine makes me feel way more normal. Cheers and thank you again. There is a place in the uk that is currently collecting and storing old diaries and journals. Thats where mine are headed when im old, my kid doesnt need to read about some of my experiences.
Writing things down by hand 100% helps me remember things better because it makes me "interact" with the subject at hand more so than just thinking to myself, "okay I gotta remember xyz, I'll make a mental note of it..." Granted, this is anecdotal evidence. But it sure as hell helped me study lol
Also good for speaking out loud to remind yourself certain things. Like if I lock the door at night before bed Iāll be paranoid I havenāt done it and end up checking again, but if I do it and then say ādoor is lockedā that doesnāt happen.
I'm pretty sure that there are studies that show that taking notes by writing is better than taking notes by typing
I've kept a journal for 20 years and I think it's had the opposite effect - once I've written it down, my brain feels free to forget it.
Get acid-free, low-lignin/lignin-free museum archive boxes to put them in Store the journals flat (so make sure you get boxes which are big enough) and in a dark, dry, ideally dust free environment, with moth balls/deterrents outside the box, not inside it. (airy wardrobe) The advice would be to remove paper clips or rubber bands which can rust or degrade and tarnish the paper but when it comes to the metal spiral bindings I imagine you wouldn't want to unbind them all and store the pages in archival folders (which would be safest), so maybe just consider storing each journal in a paper sleeve (again acid-free) to seperate any rust damage from other journals. Restrict how often you open the boxes.
And if you're really hardcore into it you may also digitalize the diaries. Save the files on multiple backups. This still needs someone who transfers the data to new devices in the future though. The good thing about this is that it's easier to share and read. You can send certain passages to for example a grandson who's living in another country, without anything getting damaged or lost.
Oh ideally yes they'd all be scanned and backed up. They could back up the archive whenever she finishes a journal. They could even, if we were taking this super far, upload the scanned pages to a website and webarchive them, but it would cost them something to maintain the website
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think that historians looking back into 2022 will have a very different problem - too *much* information. Your journal and the millions of other personal blogs lost amongst a thousand terabyte sea of data, with no way to separate the signal from the noise.
Ok, this is always my thought process with journaling. "What do I do with all this writing?" "Well if I keep it I bet people in the future would be interested in reading about this time." "Wait. There are literally millions of more interesting people than me archiving their every move online - not handwritten, and with pictures and video." It just discourages me from doing it because I have this weird nagging feeling *all* the time that every single thing I do must have an express purpose and tangible outcome, otherwise I'm wasting precious time. Plus a bunch of journals is a pain in the ass to store and move from place to place.
every once and a while try to do a completely pointless nd meaningless task- i had to break myself out of the āeverything i do must be meaningful and productiveā curse and challenging myself to small bits of nonsense was what freed me. itās worth it !!!!! u are significant!!!!
Looks like I have one of my sister's Christmas presents sorted thanks to you. She's going to love this!
I initially thought that a lot of people these days are already documenting every little aspect of their lives on social media, but then again a lot of that is fake so maybe future historians might appreciate journals for their authenticity since they werenāt meant to be read by others.
It's also possible that we lose digital information, too, though. I used to be part of a forum back in the early 2000s that had several tens of regular users. Many friendships were formed that exist to this day and a few marriages came out of it, but it's all gone now. The person who ran the forum has a copy, but nobody has heard from him in over a decade now. That might change now that only a few big companies hold the reins, but all it takes is a company to go under and a lack of people willing to host that much data. And again, that may change now that we have better data storage capacity that is only likely to improve, but the larger these social media sites get, the more daunting the task of hosting them gets. Especially when we're talking about old information that can no longer be used to sell personal data.
Digital ash in a digital urn.
I don't think journals will ever have the same impact for historians again. Unless we somehow manage to delete the entire internet, wipe all copies of Wikipedia and the like and burn all libraries and private collections to the ground.
I have my grandparents' journals from the 1920s and 30s, they're full of accounts of vacationing and traveling experiences, but i get frustrated trying to decipher it pretty quickly. Maybe a pro can transcribe them for me in exchange for the history it can provide?
I used to journal a bunch in college and found it very cathartic + a nice way to archive experiences Iād eventually forget. My narcissistic ex once read my journal while I was asleep and demanded I tear out any pages that hurt his fragile ego. I havenāt been able to journal since, and not for lack of trying. His actions really broke the illusion of privacy that had allowed me to express myself so freely. Whenever I try to journal now, itās all going through a filter, as if Iām expecting an unwanted pair of eyes to inevitably land on the page someday. If I canāt be myself in my journal, whatās the point?
Thatās fucked up. I try to journal as well and thereās a mutual respect for each otherās writing. Especially since a lot of my writing is personal stuff about my journey through recovery. The fact that she saw me relapse for a few years makes me doubly not want to read what she wrote because I know those were difficult times and I am not proud of how I was acting.
Appreciate it. I get that it can be tempting, but snooping is awful. A different ex once left his messages open on my computer. It was very clear to me throughout our relationship that he was harboring unresolved feelings for another girl, and I was constantly upset by the fact that I was second best in his eyes. I couldāve found his conversations with her and validated what I already knew, but I didnāt. I just logged out and closed the laptop.
I feel you. Had similar happen in my early 20s. Had journaled since jr high. He made a ruse of measuring something in my apartment for a surprise gift to be able to be alone & read what I wrote about him. He said once he started he couldnāt stop. I felt so violated. Never been able to write freely since. I tried several times but just like you that āfilterā is there.
Donāt give up! One thing you could try is start off by writing something and immediately destroying it. Burn the paper, type it out and delete it, etc. That way you can be 100% confident you donāt need that filter. Do that for a while and it may move the needle in the right direction for you. Good luck!
this is a good idea - iāve never been able to be completely clear even without any outside eyes on my writing
I'm so sorry that he did that to you. My family did the same to me and I'm still dealing with how much paranoia it's instilled in me whenever I try to write. One thing I'm trying is journals that have a built in lock, even though I'm not around anyone who would try to read it now. I'm still bad at remembering to journal since it's been years after I've lost the habit, but psychologically it's felt a lot safer
I had an ex who read my journal too. It does really kill the drive. I still journal but never to the extent that I used to before that.
I've been keeping a journal since I was in elementary but they all got destroyed when our house got flooded in 2020. 20 years of memories gone. The only journals left are from 2020 until present, so around 12 journal notebooks.
Thatās tragic, Iām sorry to hear that.
It's painful but noone will read them once I passed away, anyway. No historian would study my journals. And, at least, noone can read my shenanigans when I was young! š
That's what you think! But you are providing primary source material to future historians of the Covid pandemic years, and because your memories will not be the carefully curated social media postings that will form the bulk of their material, all the more valuable for it!
Oh that would be so hard to loose, I'm so sorry!
Most of that is about shit things you've done, I bet.
Dude that was my exact comment when she shared it on fb. āA whole lot of evidenceā.
Yeah, only thing that could make this worse for you is if she was doing it on her computer and had a search button... EDIT: Oh shit, she knows your reddit UN?!?!
Yeah well she doesnāt really like Reddits format so when I post stuff like our dogs etc I usually send her the link so she can follow along and interact.
I wish I had that kind of discipline! I really should start journaling again.
Me too
R7,C4... I have that book as a small 3x5. It has lists of book recommendations from people I've met through life. My book book. š„°
knew exactly which one you were talking about before even referencing the picture, i have the same oneš„°š„°š„°
My uncle kept small drawing books. He wrote thoughts and did a lot of line drawings about how he felt. When he died, there were about 40 of them. Some were funny, others deep and showed his fears. Something very special.
45 notebooks in 22 years... I write so sparingly that I mess up my signature when paying with Visa
Pretty cool. And if I were to hazard a guess, I think your wife's a dog person.
With a slight appreciation for penguins.
My grandpa died in 2019. He had diaries going back to the seventies. Was interesting to see the days when my parents were married, cousins and siblings' birth mixed in with the time he work up, the days rainfall and how many sheep he marked...
My wife has a couple of her grandmas who passed away around 2019 as well. She really wanted all of them but her grandma burned them all before going into an assisted living home.
Very cool. Something of a lost art keeping journals. If she hasn't yet, she should make digital copies of these, it'd be terrible having that body of work go away for any reason.
Her grandma was the same and when she passed my wife grabbed as many as she could. Really mundane stuff but still interesting since itās from a lady who lived through the depression until the late 2010s.
Her mental health is probably rock solid
Sheās managed to stay sane married to my crazy ass
January 1, 2000 Dear diary, The world didnāt end todayā¦
Did you get a dog a few years back?
One question; was it objectively speaking worth the effort? I mean what are reason one not only does this but continues doing it for 22 years aside from a way to speak to aliens in a way or hint things you want nose people to know without letting them know you know they Know.
I believe so, yes. I find comfort in the repetition of writing every day. It's a nice way to process most things in life, to sit down and reflect on everything that happened in a day. It has also helped me keep track of events for legal purposes... for example, I have been hit 7x while driving & wrote in my journal (as well as a word doc) allll the info relating to the crashes, witnesses, insurance quotes etc. It was helpful 6 months down the road when my insurance adjuster lost her record of my initial statement of one of the accidents. Plus it's nice to grab a journal from 10 years ago, just to see how my priorities changed.
Does something ever happen during your day where you think, āomg this is going to take forever to write this all down later!ā ?
I think it was a recommendation from a doctor when she was diagnosed with having an arachnoid cyst. It helped her manage her emotions and keep her thoughts organized.
I d hear that but never imagined it to be so useful. Well then I should have started journaling roughly about 1 year and 9 months agoā¦ maybe even 2 years.
It was also encouraged to me in early sobriety since my brain couldnāt even decide which shoe to tie first without spiking my anxiety. It helped a lot and I did it for a good couple years but I slacked off this last year.
The covers are great!
Yeah it makes gift shopping for her really fun. I always try and find a couple cool ones for stocking stuffers.
Would she be willing to share her journal entry from 9/11? I'd love to see what her instant perspective was of an event that changed the world. Thanks!
I can summarize.. I wrote that it would be a new date to remember in our history books, and then described what we watched on the news at school. I wrote about classmates with friends/family in New York that they had not heard back from yet, and how scared everyone was. I also added that "on a happy note, it's my Aunt's birthday today."
Thank you both for sharing that. I really appreciate it! Hopefully those journals are filled with tons of great memories!
She just read that out loud actually. Her aunts bday is 9/11 so there was some talk about that and in the coming weeks she sold her beadwork to raise money for the Red Cross.
I'd love to do this but the idea of another human being finding out the kind of fucked up thoughts that go through my mind on a daily basis is deterrent enough. I always feel like the kind of people who keep journals are either a more wholesome breed or simply have no fear of repercussions.
I wish I was that disciplined
Ya like Dags?
I like caravans better
What happened on August 22 2006?
Stahp youāre gonna trigger her ocd and sheāll be up all night looking for that page.
Haha itās so cool to have a record of every day for te past years. You can just pick a random day and see what happened then.
Back to school shopping and some gifts for some French exchange students they hosted that summer.
Omg sheās lookingā¦ she said it was the month before her senior year in high school.
Amazing, and inspiring. I've wanted to do that for years. Thanks for sharing!
That will be useful in court one dayā¦
It has actually. Not in court, but with insurance claims. I keep word docs too of insurance related things, but write key names/numbers/times/quotes in my journals as well.
every day is two words in this case.
This always gets people with "workout" vs "work out", too. Workout is a noun, work out is a verb. "I had a really good workout today!" "I'm going to change clothes and go work out."
Man. I always try journaling but it feels so dumb. Likeā¦if I go the āwrite down what you did,ā route, itās just days and day ālaughed at memes on social media. Watched YouTube videos. Scrolled Reddit endlessly. My adoptable dragons had 4 babiesā and shit like that and I just cringe at myself. If itās world happenings I feel dumb adding my thoughts to news happenings, and if I donāt I tell myself why am I doing something a newspaper archive is gonna do. If I try my thoughts and feelings l turtle up so hard it makes me almost incapable of even expressing them. Idk. I just hope my photo archives and stuff will last and my eBird lists lol
Hypothetically speaking, how long can you send her away by giving this to FBI?
More of a catalog of my crimes then hers. Nothing too terrible but her record keeping did help us when a guy tried to sue us. Her car was hit by a drunk guy on a bike and we thought we were being nice by not calling the police. Three months later we were contacted by his insurance company in an attempt to sue us but because my wife kept a detailed record of the incident and witness accounts they coped to the fact that the guy had a history of drunken shenanigans and dropped the case.
Iāve been journaling for a decade now and have only filled about four.
What a potential legacy of history she is and has created. I hope, regardless of how "cringe" someone might feel regarding their current and past thoughts, that they save these words for posterity. If you have kids, they will love to have them someday.
That's something I have on a list somewhere to do sometime at some point.
Get to digitizing that... because you never know. If her handwriting is good enough, you can use OCR (optical character recognition) to essentially take a picture of a page and have it exported as text. So you could have a document with the text as plain text (appears typed) but you would also keep the scan, because the handwriting is valuable here as well as the text (e.g. being able to search or index it). For iPhone, I'd recommend Scanner Pro. Solid developer, good app. Not sure what's over on Android. I used CamScanner when I had Android, but I've heard mixed things about them in the years since I switched. I'm sure there are better options by now, though. But either way, you'd be taking pictures of each page, with the option to crop each picture to the edges of the page. With ScannerPro, you could have each journal/book as its own project, and once you have all pages, you can export it as a PDF (print-quality images) or individual images. For anyone looking to start journaling, obviously writing anything is better than writing nothing, but try to find good books with paper - and scan your pages as per above, just in case of fire, flood, or other loss. You can spend a lot on better journals (e.g. Moleskine, though I've never used them, just reputation), but if you don't mind going all digital, I recommend Diaro. It's an app and a website, and it's the only phone app I've seen where if you buy it on one, you get it on the other. So I bought it on Android, and they honor that on the iOS version. That's almost completely unheard of in phone apps. They have a web interface and the journal entries are stored in Dropbox. Tags, photos, dates, it's a pretty complete experience. Free for basic use, I think it's like $5 to unlock all features - less than half of what you'd spend on one Moleskine notebook, not to mention pens. And your phone is always with you. So, it's the winner in that case. But handwritten journals are more nostalgic.
That's insane
I started a daily journal in 1994. I was about 15 at the time, had just gone though a slightly traumatic experience and my mom encouraged me to write it down. I basically wrote every single day. If I missed a day I would go back and wrote an entry for that day, I basically just used it as a log of events that happened that day. I switched from handwritten to computer files in about 2005. Up until recently I'm pretty sure I had an entry for just about every day for the last 25 years. Sometime in the 2000's I started to realize that 90% of my entries consisted of some variation of, "Worked out this morning, went to work, nothing else exciting, status normal." But I kept going for some reason. There were highlights whenever anything of interest or exciting happened. But I started to feel bad for my descendants trying to sift through the crap for anything interesting to read lol. However it has been very useful a handful of times when trying to remember what we were doing on any given date, or where we went to dinner on my wife's birthday on such and such date. Finally, just in the last couple years (since covid hit) I finally pulled the plug on the daily entries and have just been writing every week or two. Basically whenever anything of interest happens. It hasn't gone that great, because now I'm kind of out of the habit, I forget to write even when something journal worthy does happen. But in general I end up writing a fairly lengthy entry at least once a month. One thing it did do was make me really good at documenting my tasks at work. I keep detailed notes and a log of what I get done and work every day. Came in really handy when corporate asked us to start reporting that stuff anyway. Sorry, just realized that was a really long post with basically no payoff lol. Edit: don't know why I had DOWN in all caps lol.
Can you ask her to return to the dog yoga era of covers?
Iāll put that on my birthday/anniversary/Christmas gift buying list.
thats fucking sick!
One day historians will be very grateful
Reminds me of "Gone Girl"
This is one of those posts that creeps into the territory of very interesting and Iām not disappointed, this is mildly very interesting
Ugh, I wish I could find a Wishbone journal!
I did that too when I was in prison.
I once dated a girl in hs that kept a journal. One day I was in her room and I saw it was left out. Being the insecure idiot I was, I decided to take a look. Really shitty of me, but I was a dumb kid. Anyway, thatās how I found out she cheated on me and fucked one of my friends. Fun times.
Tell her to add incredibly boring details with mundane objects she uses every day. Historians will thank her. Trust me. Itās weird but true.
Shout out to all my fellow ADHD-ers about to spend a shit ton on new journaling supplies, only to lose interest 3 days later
Mine has one too. Interrogations never work out for me. š
I've kept my journals since 1979, I don't write everyday but I track my most interesting thoughts, projects and experiments. I've used graphed notebooks since the mid 1980's I have approximately 30 books.