Hi all,
I was wondering whether any of y’all are still keeping diaries. I have a google drive folder that I just dump paragraph after paragraph into constantly. It’s mostly just me venting about the crap in my life, but I also have a sizable amount of personal poetry and short stories that I also put in there. I had a diary in high school but I never thought that I would have one, let alone an online one, at this point in my life. Do any of y’all still keep a diary? And if you do, is it online or physical?
i tried keeping a dream diary for a while but it was honestly too difficult to remember my dreams. i have a sorta-diary i do now where at the end of my day, i draw a single tarot card and then reflect on it. it’s been a lot easier to stay consistent with keeping the diary going every couple of days when it’s tied to something i like to do, like tarot
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I’ve kept a journal since around 2011. I’ve had multiple journals all together, which kind of sucks, but they’re a mix of physical and digital, from Little Prince notebooks to the Day One app. Mine are a mixture of listing gratitude because I can be a massively negative person, and just talking about the day and my thoughts. It’s illuminating, looking back on things you said 6 years and thinking about how different you’ve become. I cringe at things I’ve said in the past, but I’m glad I can cringe - it’s a sign of growth!
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I never could keep a consistent diary/journal, so the desire to write in one usually came as a “burst”, which I try to channel into my fiction or a blog post.
The only consistent writings I’ve done are from my “writing practice”. Every Friday, I went to a community center where people would get a couple writing prompts, read them without feedback, and then do it again. Every week for over five years, I’d produce 6-8 handwritten pages. Although, I recently had a big purge of all of my old writing and got rid of everything except the last couple years worth of writing practice. As a writer, I found that having old writings only weighed me down. It’s only been a few weeks, but I’ve been more productive since then.
I use Day One sporadically and in pretty lightweight ways: It’s mostly full of some now very old integrations with some of my social feeds, but I also use it as a sort of photo album and do occasional “real” writing in it. I’ve recently started writing more very short snippets to it using jrnl, which is pretty neat, even though it has this unfortunate note in its readme:
Journals aren’t only for 13-year old girls and people who have too much time on their summer vacation.
I keep meaning to submit a pull request to take that out, because it distracts me so much from what’s otherwise a pretty good, small writing tool.
I’ve had a few jobs over the years that required me to keep reasonably detailed logbooks (including a recent post for four years). Which is kinda keeping a diary but work-related.
That was also just using GDocs to dump notes, ideas, thoughts, and records into.
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I try to do some writing in a big Google Doc a few times a week. Usually ends up being more like twice a month, but at least I’ve been keeping it up for a good year now. Finding it pretty useful to work through stuff in my head, like figuring out what’s making me sad or how to avoid falling back into bad habits. Also always fun to go back to these things years later!
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For the last 5+ years I’ve made a habit of keeping a daily blog/diary recording interesting things I read about or find on the internet - mainly artworks, essays, poems, videos etc. This was mainly to deal with the frustration I got when I would half-remember something and couldn’t find it again. I have a strict rule to make sure I make 1 post per day, every day, no matter what - and now there are over 1800 posts. It is quite satisfying to have this kind of external memory bank there that I can easily dip into to refresh my thoughts when I can’t quite recall something.
I kept a diary for most of high school, stopped because my mom kept stealing and reading it. Now I get stuff out of me with art or piano or fiction. My dreams are only remembered when I get to naturally wake up (as opposed to an alarm); my sleep schedule is too messed up for that.
Curious if people here has a journal they write on? Share some techniques and styles.
I just started writing in a small note pad with crud drawings like in Night in the woods.
Sometimes I keep an intrusive thoughts journal. I do it to put them before me and externalize them and see them as something other from my own mind. But I wouldn’t really share any with others since they’re very disturbing.
I have also wanted to start keeping game journals but I’ve been instead doing live tweeting to fill a similar role.
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This seems like a relevant short thread on that (that includes digital):
Oh I was wondering if we had a thread on it. Guess I was searching the wrong words.
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Just gonna do some quick post witching here, don’t mind me
Thanks for that.
i keep a tarot journal although… i dunno my life isnt particularly Changeable at the minute so it’s kinda samey, i should prob start doing readings for other people?
mostly it’s literally just. do a reading, write how that is relevant to me, note if these are cards/suits i’m seeing a lot of, that sort of thing. dont really get super deep into my emotional state outside of the question i’m using for the reading vOv
I usually have a few moleskines or Field Notes booklets that I get really into updating for a few days/weeks, then lose track for a while. They’re typically stream-of-consciousness brain dumps, early in the morning which I found to help me get ready for the day and clear the fog.
I keep track of a few other things (moods, ideas) in a Notes app, but I do appreciate the physical books because, lordy I barely do any handwriting anymore and it probably does my brain good to physically write things out.
I don’t have problems with intrusive thoughts, but I effectively do the same thing if I have a discrete thought that makes me anxious. To that end, it’s not important that it’s in a journal, so much as it’s written down and given a place to sit and be processed that isn’t my own head.
I’ve always wanted to journal, and as a child, I would receive beautiful leather bound journals that I would attempt to use and then inevitably destroy as I tore out pages because I was unhappy with what I wrote or my penmanship or some other detail that seemed counter to how I wanted to present myself (to myself). When David Sedaris was talking about journaling for Theft by Finding he mentioned that he had to tell himself when he began journaling that in the beginning his entries were just going to be trash. I’ve never quite been able to get past that point.
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I use a Hobonichi Techo as a diary and to track my meals and stuff. It’s fantastic 
Feels good to jot down thoughts physically
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I began using a Hobonichi Techo in 2016, after finding out about them after Satoru Iwata’s death. Iwata was the IT manager for the company that made these, working for his friend and fellow developer Shigesato Itoi (known for the Mother games) who owned the company.
Just before bed, I write out a few paragraphs about what I did in the day. Many days, it’s about things but that isn’t a problem. And I don’t care about having good handwriting in it or stress about crossing words out. Worrying about things like that would normally be barriers to me.
I’ve built up the habit of writing in it so it’s there for when I need it, whether I know I need it or not.
