Diaries, Journals, Logs - do you keep them, and why and how?

[ocean view]

During the lockdown I kept a log of what we did each day in the Notes app on my phone. Initially I started doing it for exposure tracing, but later it just became a way to differentiate the days. My entries were simple. Never more than a few words.

It’s interesting to read through them now, just 2 years later. Events that seemed to have occurred months into lockdown, were actually just weeks from the start. Time is a funny thing.

 

[bbbamI]

Since I was a kid, I tried to keep a journal, well it was called a diary back then.

Never could stay with it though. But in January 2003, I started one and have kept up with it through the years.

In the past, I'd write something each day, but changed that habit and now I jot down a few key words, then I put all the happenings together for the first half of the month. Rinse and repeat for the second half. It's much easier using my computer instead of writing by hand.

I try not to include my emotions, but sometimes they creep in. My DH has been keeping a journal for several years. But his journal is on his m/c trips and the trips we take together. His journal is fun, mine has details of not so fun times, but...such is life.

 

[Koolau]

DW (GF at the time) used to keep a diary but she made up code in case her brother - or worse, her mom ever read it. So after a date, we might go to a local park and sit on a swing together. Wife would finish the diary entry with "WMO." YMMV

 

[Gumby]

DW (GF at the time) used to keep a diary but she made up code in case her brother - or worse, her mom ever read it. So after a date, we might go to a local park and sit on a swing together. Wife would finish the diary entry with "WMO." YMMV

You made omelets?

 

[N02L84ER]

DW (GF at the time) used to keep a diary but she made up code in case her brother - or worse, her mom ever read it. So after a date, we might go to a local park and sit on a swing together. Wife would finish the diary entry with "WMO." YMMV

You didn't mind she was writing "with my oaf"?

 

[Koolau]

You made omelets?

Real close. (We made out.)

Her mom would have never figured it out - or known what it meant if she did.

 

[athena53]

I have been keeping a text file on my computer for more than 20 years. In it, each day I logged the total value of my entire investable assets as reported by MS Money and now Quicken, and the values of the 3 indices Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq.

I've logged month-end values of my assets since 1991. It helps me to keep from freaking out in times like these when I can see the upward trend and how I've recovered from past bear markets.

The only time I keep a journal of sorts is when I do a major trip. I have a travel blog and I keep notes for that and also send e-mails to a couple of friends daily and post a little of it on FB. There's some overlap, of course. When I'm traveling alone I just feel a need to share my experiences with others and when someone asks me about my trip I can point them to the blog in addition to telling them stories and showing pictures.

 

[ERsoonihope]

I’ve kept a journal since 1999. Sometimes it’s daily entries but I don’t get all OCD about doing an entry every day. Longest I’ve gone without an entry is a few months. All but the first journal have been written In small moleskin notebooks. Have over a dozen filled by now. Mostly I’m writing about things that either stress me out or that I’m concerned about. I suspect the journals are my way to problem solve. Entries can be a couple sentences or a page or more. I rarely look back at them but it’s pretty interesting the times I’ve done so. I think the practice has been valuable for me - but I have no idea what I’ll eventually do with them. I suppose destroy them - but it will be emotionally difficult.

 

[RobbieB]

I'm going to start my first ever, a log book to record boat maintenance by task, date and engine hours.

 

[dixonge]

I have, in the past, *very* sporadically attempted journaling/diarying. Recently tried Day One for a bit. Not my style. Now I've been able to journal/log (usually in just text form) much more regularly. A lot of my motivation came from this article:

Replace Your To-Do List With Interstitial Journaling To Increase Productivity

 

[Born2BRetd]

I keep a record of my daily activities in a diary so I don't forget what I've been up to and also to give me a sense of accomplishment. I definitely don't journal though as I, as well as many here it seems, couldn't stand the drivel and angst of a journal I kept when I was a teenager.

 

[Pellice]

I'm going to start my first ever, a log book to record boat maintenance by task, date and engine hours.

Robbie, does your log keep track of your trips in your boat? I think they do, right? It would be fun to look back and see what days and where you took your boat out - otherwise, it will all seem like boat maintenance. !

 

[target2019]

I started a daily log when we visited Germany on Oct 2021. It was useful when organizing photos and stories. I keep it on my desk and still enter a few notes each day. Some stock prices and so on...and timestamp of various medical-related things like medicare.

I also use an outliner application called treepad to organize larger projects, like genealogical mysteries, seminars, and similar. Also used that during the medicare search.

These are habits I'm continuing with from work days as a writer and anlayst. If I go days without saying anything, that is fine also.

From consulting work I found that keeping details others did not gave me an edge with future troublshooting.

This desk book is 5 x 7 approximately, double spiral bound, with hard forest green covers. What attracted me to this one is that it lays flat when opened. The spirals are good quality and don't catch if you fold the book over to make it smaller when writing. The paper quality is excellent, with no bleed-thru. It really is quite nice and I found it in Borders. It held up very well through thousands of miles of travel, and getting stuffed in my pack and car door pockets. A ball point pen fits neatly in the spiral.

I guess that all means this post is An Ode to A Notebook.

Edit: Month-end finances are in an Excel sheet. Been doing that since 1990.

 

[Ronstar]

I've been using field notes for years. Just for notes, ideas, and sketches.

https://fieldnotesbrand.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwk_WVBhBZEiwAUHQCmbGe9l2HmcXiFA3sjq627sb8F00xkxOpx5E5JcJ_Kag-OioncMTAzxoCrRwQAvD_BwE

 

[Morgan22]

DW (GF at the time) used to keep a diary but she made up code in case her brother - or worse, her mom ever read it. So after a date, we might go to a local park and sit on a swing together. Wife would finish the diary entry with "WMO." YMMV

I had a friend in middle school that kept a diary. She wrote about all of the stupid (fun back then) things our group of friends did and her feelings about her family. Her mother found it and read it. After that I knew I would never write down and keep anything that potentially be embarrassing/hurtful for my family/friends.

 

[Koolau]

I had a friend in middle school that kept a diary. She wrote about all of the stupid (fun back then) things our group of friends did and her feelings about her family. Her mother found it and read it. After that I knew I would never write down and keep anything that potentially be embarrassing/hurtful for my family/friends.

Probably a good idea not to keep a diary - especially a diary with feelings. But in this case, I figure it's on the mom for reading it. Kids have mixed feelings about everything. What they write today might be hurtful. What they write next week might be uplifting. Unless there is a pressing need such as a child who has expressed suicidal thoughts, leave the kid's private stuff alone. YMMV

 

[Seagirt]

I love journals, but only as a way to capture things I want to remember.

- a separate journal for every trip, like others said. But I also usually keep an ongoing 'outings' journal for local trips, walks, any good day when I want to remember details - observations, new explorations.

Similarly, I have an ongoing journal for my property. Unusual weather, animal or bird sightings, when things come into bloom. This is deliberately sporadic, I don't want it to fill up. I've set it up so each page is a day/month, and I note the year for each entry.

Exercise, meditation, and other habit journals, where I make regular entries on what I've learned and to encourage myself/show progress. Though some of these die and get re-purposed for a new habit

- A poetry journal, where I've long copied out favorite poems I want to remember.
- A gratitude journal, used sporadically for 25 years. I often do it for a couple of weeks in the new year.

Now that I'm fully retired, I want to do more writing, and am experimenting with a journal where I can note down vivid past memories, favorite quotes, long-term musings, but organized around meaningful themes. For example 'Dancing': I might write about memories (serious or humorous), favorite song titles or lines from songs from different time periods. The notebook is a kind with moveable pages, so I can add to it. I like to think of it as something I'll build over the rest of my life, and review when I'm in the nursing home...

 

[O2Bfree]

I kept a diary as a teen. I was a rather bad girl and my parents read it, found out I was sneaking out at night to see boys, smoking weed, drinking, and such. They were shocked and incensed. But the worst part was they never gave the diary back to me. I never had the courage to ask for it back and don't know what happened to it. So that's why I never went into politics.

Since then, I've kept a journal off and on through adulthood, with the steadiest streak starting in 2005 to document my Buddhist studies, practice, and online conversations.

I also jot down a few yearly notes about my veggie garden—dates when things were planted inside or outside, unusually hot or cold weather, what struggled or bolted, etc.

And the past year I started taking notes on our travels. Wish I'd started this sooner, my memory for places is not great, and photos don't always help.

 

[luckydude]

I mentioned something about this in the Hobbies thread, then did a quick search of ER and couldn't find much at all. That surprised me. Maybe photography has taken over that function.

I occasionally kept them over the years, but didn't hit my stride until retirement. The ones from my youth and young adulthood were sparse and filled with misery, self-doubt, and self-admonitions and self-improvement efforts. As I was reorganizing after retirement, I came across a couple and ended up throwing them out. I'm not that person anymore and don't need to read any of that again. When I started birding, I kept a few records describing sightings and locations in handwritten booklets that I can't seem to find now. Then I migrated online to the old Sidekick (remember that??) and kept some records which were lost to either computer crashes or obsolescence of software. (sad, as I would like to have read them).

Once I retired, I got better and better at keeping a diary, and have now managed daily entries for more than 2 years. Mine is a diary, not a journal, more a record of daily activities than deep thoughts or summaries of current events. I find if I don't do it the days escape me and run together, and I wonder "where did the time go." With a diary, I can pretty easily recall things.

With the decline of steady correspondence, I wonder how historians of the future will piece together the daily experiences of individuals. One reason I dislike texting for more than immediate needs is that it provides no record and no context. I wonder whether historians would be more interested in musings about current events or crises, or whether they'd really love to know about how we spent our time!

What about you? Do you keep any kind of daily record? If so, what kind? Is it paper or online? Why do you keep it? I use MS OneNote because of the superior formatting and indexing capabilities. Each year is a new file with 12 tabs by month and notes arranged in daily order with subject headings composed of a few keywords about what was most memorable for that day. I made a template that makes it easy to record a brief mention of weather and whether I did my exercise or a bird trip that day. Sounds more complicated than it is! I'd actually like to put more effort (e.g. upload a photo or two) than I do, but haven't found the time yet. Have any of you found superior journaling applications?

I thought about making this a poll, but believe there are probably too few doing this to make it worthwhile.

This probably makes me sound like a total dweeb/nerd, but I'll own up to the fact that I've been keeping journals daily for 36 years. Good, bad, sad, happy, mundane---everything is captured faithfully without filter. It started on an Apple word processor then in the late 80s I migrated to PC. I still have them all in digital format with multiple back-ups. With rare exceptions of a missed day or two, I've been very disciplined. I usually spend half an hour or more keeping an entry daily.

My digital journals also include all my travels with pics going back to the early 90s when I started traveling. It's a great way to relive one's travel adventure (and I've had plenty of those).

Others may disagree, but I find it great fun to go back and read them every so often. They are memories that will last forever and writing them down and re-reading them years later give me great joy. I figure when I'm too old to do anything, I'll still have them to relive the good ole' days.

BTW, I also keep tracking of all daily expenses and my investment/NW going back 30+ years on Excel. I can look up and tell you how much I spent on what on any given day going back to 1988.

 

[O2Bfree]

This probably makes me sound like a total dweeb/nerd, but I'll own up to the fact that I've been keeping journals daily for 36 years. Good, bad, sad, happy, mundane---everything is captured faithfully without filter. It started on an Apple word processor then in the late 80s I migrated to PC. I still have them all in digital format with multiple back-ups. With rare exceptions of a missed day or two, I've been very disciplined. I usually spend half an hour or more keeping an entry daily.

My digital journals also include all my travels with pics going back to the early 90s when I started traveling. It's a great way to relive one's travel adventure (and I've had plenty of those).

Others may disagree, but I find it great fun to go back and read them every so often. They are memories that will last forever and writing them down and re-reading them years later give me great joy. I figure when I'm too old to do anything, I'll still have them to relive the good ole' days.

That is awesome! I agree it'd be great to read journals from so many years ago. They might contain some good reminders about life lessons that would otherwise be forgotten, ignored, or relearned at some cost.

 

[Jerry1]

Others may disagree, but I find it great fun to go back and read them every so often. They are memories that will last forever and writing them down and re-reading them years later give me great joy.

I find the same to be true with the pictures DW has taken over our lives (40+ years of marriage). She has pictures of practicality every event that has taken place in our lives - much like a journal. There have been times when I’ve spent an hour or more just clicking on random pictures and reliving parts of our lives.

 

[street]

I do keep a journal at the ranch house. When I'm there I log current event and family happens and world events along with what I did and the findings and things happening at the current time at the ranch. Weather, observation of wildlife, things I did that day etc.

I'm there a lot but I don't always go to cabin so than nothing gets logged. I started this about 13 years ago. I keep each log short with about 4 to 6 lines.

 

[Koolau]

It occurs to me that social media is some folks "journals." I wonder if posting here counts?

 

[Pellice]

It occurs to me that social media is some folks "journals." I wonder if posting here counts?

I believe it does - but not so easy to search, and not as useful as a "diary" since posts are in response to specific threads.

In fact, many bulletin board formats like ER do include "members' diaries" sections which can be made public, or only available to members, or private. I'm guessing that the original founders of ER decided against including that functionality. I remember the old "Organized Home" bulletin board had such a function and people wrote in their diaries about their daily experiences.

During the pandemic (which we are still in) there were many chat and email groups organized where people who were not seeing anyone could write to friends about daily activities. The NYT ran an article earlier this year about the gradual, natural ebbing of such groups as activity picked up again. I was and am in such a group, and we still have almost - but not quite - daily contact, but it is briefer now.

Only since retirement have I kept mine up, but I'm so glad I have, and I just wish I had one from earlier years. I have sporadic entries and wish I had more.

 

[friar1610]

I won’t go into the history of my journal/daily log. I’ve fallen off the wagon and haven’t done it for a while and am trying to get back on track. I found keeping one particularly useful to answer a few mundane questions when memories fail:

- What did we have for dinner last Thursday?
- What season/episode of a Prime/Netflix/etc. series did we last watch? (Alternatively, to answer the question, while watching Episode 3 of a series, “Haven’t we watched this before?”)

Nobody can accuse me of journaling any “deep thoughts.”.