journaling
/I started keeping a journal in 1990 when things were beyond my control and I needed a place to vent and daily phone calls to my mom were expensive. It may have been those cute pocket size journals with cloth plaid covers that made me want to write. Eventually I switched to larger journals. When I started carrying a planner, I used extra pages in there. Even though I started using a Palm Pilot in 2002, I didn't go digital with my journal until 2011. I have several Moleskine journals filled with my thoughts and rants.
Some people say a blog can be an online journal. Not for me. Journal writing is something else. Mostly just bits of facts from my day or sometimes I random thought I should explore later.
I started journaling when I was miserable. I used it to vent my frustration with my life. When I tried blogging this stuff and got yelled at by my sister. She didn't think it should be online and that I was wrong.
I journaled less as I became friends with B. She called daily and I got most of those thoughts out into the world. Blogging wasn't as important anymore.
As I get older, I have less to kvetch about. But I feel the need the need to share my thoughts. Maybe not share but get them down on "paper." Bonnie doesn't call every day. She doesn't even call every week. She is busy. I am not.
My days are filled with little unimportant tasks to everyone but me.
I was in another scrapbooking frenzy wanting to get it all done. I want the photos and stories recorded. There are a lot of stories that have no photos and they are still important to record and treasure. OK maybe not treasure. I mean who will want to read about me in 20 years? Fifty years? Sometimes, I don't even want to read them next week.
When I moved to digital, I started with Momento on my iPhone. Then I moved to DayOne for iOS and MacOS. I love DayOne but I tend not write long entries. I use it more for general notes and quotes I want to remember for later. I still use Momento as an aggregator of my web activity and FourSquare logging. (I know that Brett Terpstra made something to aggregate those things in DayOne but I have not tried it. I am too anxious about doing things in coding.)
When I have an idea for a longer journal entry, I note it in Drafts. I add notes until I am ready to write.
I am not a writer and think of writing a chore. I tend to try to get it out of the way and done. I have never been one to read and reread and school essay and make revisions. I was lucky to write it once and then a final time to correct typos. I am so old that we didn't even have an electric typewriter let alone a computer or word processor. When I blogged, I would type something up, scan quickly for typos and post.
Writing is not something I enjoy like photography or drawing. I never enter FLOW. I enjoy the physical aspects of writing, of forming letters by hand. At least until my carpal tunnel acts up and my hand begins to tingle.
But I do like getting thoughts out of my head and onto paper.