Journaling

I keep a journal and have since 1990. When I opened it this morning I looked down at the page count; it’s hard to believe that I’m already up to 401 pages in the yearly (2006) journal to this point. That’s more than a page a day and that’s just this year. Sure, a lot of it is fluff. But it is all about me, fluff and all, and that is the point of having a personal journal. And as usual, I sometimes wonder why I include as much as I do? You would think that I would keep the personal stuff to myself, but since it is a personal journal first and a historical journal second, that is appropriate. When, or if my descendents read it, I will be gone. In the meantime, it serves me as a means of communicating with myself. Yes, that’s what I do. I’m talking to myself and I go back over the pages and years quite frequently; noting how I have changed and how my values might have changed as well. We’re always evolving and the journal is a great way of keeping track of where you’ve been. It’s therapeutic as well; writing down those things that bother you seems to take some of the weight off of them. Also, it contains historical facts, both minor and major. What happened to me and what happened to the world. I love the fact that I can go back to the year 1990 and read my sparse entries (5) from that year. Each year’s journal grew larger as I became a better chronicler of my life.

Fifteen minutes a day. That’s all you need to start and maintain a journal. You must have a computer and word processing software. Not much else is needed. I started with a continuous journal and the first ten years are in one file. After that I kept yearly files and now I have 6 of them and I’m about to open the 7th one. Part of the reason for the growth of the files was that my ability to cut and paste additional text and images grew and so my journals reflect that new skill. With 400+ pages this year, I can probably expect to see 450 or 500 in the next year. I should note here that I use hyperlinks within the journal to move easily from day to day and month to month, as well as moving me to various photos and articles. It’s a simple trick and it sure helps when the document grows beyond a couple dozen pages.