Do you keep a diary?

[LeoXiao]

As I said I don't really keep a regular diary anymore, but one thing I do have is a word document for instant interpretations, or "Instapretations". If I have a great idea for a story or some analysis of a situation or a rant that absolutely must be recorded, I write it in there unless it actually becomes a complete work in which case it gets its own document.

@Fanty: That's a cool script. Can you read it fluently?

[fanty]

Originally Posted by LeoXiao

@Fanty: That's a cool script. Can you read it fluently?

I don't really have much practice reading it, so I'm a bit slow at it. I can write it fast though, since I've been writing in it for over a year now.

[DragoZERO]

I have actually been thinking of making a journal. My memory is really bad so I figure if I write it down, it'll stick more and I can go back and check it out. Not to mention it's good to express yourself.

I'm not sure if I should encrypt it and put it on the cloud or get an old fashioned notebook though... what does everyone else use?

[Paranoid Android]

I don't write full sentences. They're just keywords that trigger important emotions/memories. That in a way, is an cipher.

TBH, I like my unreliable long term memory that seems to forget everything. I'm not a fan of looking at my past in detail. As long as I remember the general gist of my personal past events it's good enough. By writing it down, things become too vivid and I feel like it will hold me back from thinking forward.

[Flower]

I kept a diary from 1988 to 2011. Last year was my last year. And by diary I mean on a daily basis, of course. 2009-2011 were very difficult for me to keep up with it as much as before.

I still journal - which means I write an entry when the thought/inspiration/mood strikes me.

As for why ... well, primarily I used the diary/journal as a means for developing and articulating my thoughts and feelings, or "capturing" an interesting idea or event that took place.

[DragoZERO]

Originally Posted by Paranoid Android

I don't write full sentences. They're just keywords that trigger important emotions/memories. That in a way, is an cipher.

TBH, I like my unreliable long term memory that seems to forget everything. I'm not a fan of looking at my past in detail. As long as I remember the general gist of my personal past events it's good enough. By writing it down, things become too vivid and I feel like it will hold me back from thinking forward.

The thing is, my memory is bad. My Mom made a list of special things she and my dad did for me until high school. I remembered none of it.

[warita]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

I don't believe it was related to forcing people to be ambidextrous, but perhaps that's what you were thinking of?

In my family we are 50:5O left handed..... and a few of my family members were forced to become right handed.... not without side effects. Both my brother and cousin had trouble because of it. Fortunately for my sister, my mother learned from her mistakes and didnt try to change her, so my sis is left handed.

I read a few studies on the subject, I am interested in psycology and neurology a little bit and there are negative side effects to changing from left to right handed. But everybody is different and some people suffer none whereas other can be pretty bad off. Depends on the person really. Either way, I personally wouldnt experiment with it too much. If you lose a hand or if your hand is broken for a longer period of time, you pick up writing with the left hand pretty quickly anyways.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by DragoZERO

I have actually been thinking of making a journal. My memory is really bad so I figure if I write it down, it'll stick more and I can go back and check it out. Not to mention it's good to express yourself.

I'm not sure if I should encrypt it and put it on the cloud or get an old fashioned notebook though... what does everyone else use?

It's surprising how much we forget. I don't think that we necessarily need to remember everything, but it's nice to have little things that can jog your memory here and there...

Are you using Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux? Online services don't necessarily require you to publish things to the open internet - you can keep it private so that you're the only one who can read the entries. The benefit is that it's platform-agnostic, and you don't need to worry about making backups. The downside is that there's a security risk (whether someone hacking your account or if the service screws up and makes all private entries public), it'll only last as long as the service does, and it's pretty much text-only.

If you're using a Mac, the software that I use is called NoteBook (not free, but not overly expensive). It's basically an equivalent to Microsoft OneNote. It's not specialized journaling software (it's much more versatile than that), but it can be used for that purpose. It allows you to password-protect and encrypt individual journals, and you can load images, videos, and any other files into the journal.

More specialized journaling software on the Mac is MacJournal. Unlike NoteBook, it allows you to publish your entries to online blogging services from within the program (if you want to). Also, whereas you would be responsible for keeping track of dates and times for journal entries yourself in NoteBook, MacJournal has a chronicling system in place. My understanding is that it also allows you to attach files to journal entries. I own it, but acquired it in a software bundle after I had already started using NoteBook. Given that NoteBook has been working well enough for me, I didn't consider making the effort to switch to MacJournal... but talking about it now, maybe I'll consider it again.

Originally Posted by warita

In my family we are 50:5O left handed..... and a few of my family members were forced to become right handed.... not without side effects. Both my brother and cousin had trouble because of it. Fortunately for my sister, my mother learned from her mistakes and didnt try to change her, so my sis is left handed.

I read a few studies on the subject, I am interested in psycology and neurology a little bit and there are negative side effects to changing from left to right handed. But everybody is different and some people suffer none whereas other can be pretty bad off. Depends on the person really. Either way, I personally wouldnt experiment with it too much. If you lose a hand or if your hand is broken for a longer period of time, you pick up writing with the left hand pretty quickly anyways.

That's interesting. I can't think of any physiological reason why it should cause problems. I'll look into it when I have the time. If you know of anything, I'd be happy to hear it!

[Paranoid Android]

Oh, one thing to add to my first post, it just occured to me my email is also a frequent private journal.

I have over 2000 drafts in my gmail account. Like 1 draft dated May 3rd quite a few years back that had 3 words in it: "she said yes". These are never sent and do not have a recipient, just a date and some random text, sometimes an attachment of a photo or some random thing.

That is enough to give me back a few hundred pages of memories (:

[Nightbat®]

The daily verbal diarrhea I can find all over tweets blogs over the most inane things make me decide against it

..I mean
after so much useless crap, it's frightning to reread my own thoughts and confirm that when it comes to useless crap, I best the entire internet

In seriousness, I have kept a diary for a while to sort out my thoughts once long ago,
but there's not much value to reread something selfreflecting, when you're already selfreflecting on those same things without writing them down

[Random32]

I don't think its as important how you keep your diary, but what you choose to write down and how much detail you go in to. I personally have a really long Word document for each category of my diary entries. I could use an online service or dedicated software, or if my handwriting improved, a physical notebook, but I don't really see a compelling reason that makes it worth it to switch.

I keep at important work stuff diary for recording problems, fixes, annoyances, things that went really well, things that could have went better, etc. And a decision making thought process diary to record my thought process when making an important decision. These are things that I have a high chance of wanting to go over later, and thus should be recorded in high detail imho.

Daily life events. Not so much. I don't really think its worth keeping track of what I had for lunch, new songs that I liked, etc. I don't think I'm the type of person that would ever be interested looking back at them, nor do would I like anyone else to looking at them if I became famous or something.

To the people that keep handwritten diaries. Do you ever wish that they were typed up instead so you have conveniences like small physical size, easy backup, searchability, etc? Or am I different in the fact that I value those conveniences a lot?

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Random32

To the people that keep handwritten diaries. Do you ever wish that they were typed up instead so you have conveniences like small physical size, easy backup, searchability, etc? Or am I different in the fact that I value those conveniences a lot?

I started out with a hand-written diary (which has since been scanned in and incorporated into my digital one). There were a few advantages to having a physical journal over a digital one. It had more "character," and there was something special about holding an object that you knew you had held and written in years ago. You could also draw freely and easily. I can do that with my current journaling software, but then I have to break out my Wacom tablet...

I have used the search functionality of my digital journal quite a bit, though. It's incredibly useful. And small size is definitely a plus: if I were to print all of my entries, the page count would probably be in the thousand range. Then again, if I were hand-writing each entry, I would be much slower and probably would write a lot less per entry.

I forgot to mention that I also split my diary to have a new section for recording dreams and their interpretations. The idea there is getting into the habit of recording dreams after you wake up (or as you remember them) supposedly leads to having more lucid dreams, and even the ability to control your dreams. It's a bit difficult to find the time to record the dream right after you wake up, though. I've also considered creating yet another section for short stories. I got the idea from one of my colleagues, who went through a period of intense frustration. His outlet was to write satirical short stories (which were quite good to read, actually). If I were to maintain physical journals, I'd probably have many lying around - with digital, I can have all of those journals in one file, easily accessible, locked, and encrypted.

[DragoZERO]

The digital sounds good and would be easier to do since I, naturally, can type better than I write. But the handwritten will be readable forever. Technology is constantly changing and who knows what will happen in the future. Plus the cloud, Like Ledgem said, will only live for as long as the service. I didn't think of that, so good point. I think I'd use Dropbox since it'd be on my computer and the cloud at the same time.

I am torn between what to do. I mean, I can put keywords and stuff to make it easy to find stuff. Plus, I could always print them, just in case.

[Flower]

Nope - I do not wish it had been hand typed. But for a specific reason other than ease of sharing or search options or such.

For me the actual process of doing the physical action of writing something out by hand is a catalyst for forming my thoughts more precisely on a subject, and it is more effective for me than speaking or any other activity.

[Endless Soul]

Originally Posted by DragoZERO

I'm not sure if I should encrypt it and put it on the cloud or get an old fashioned notebook though... what does everyone else use?

Even though I did some blogging with Live Journal some years ago, these days I use an old fashioned pencil and notebook.

Endless "Keeping it simple" Soul

[NoemiChan]

Supposibly, diaries are meant to be read only when the owner is dead. Well, keeping that hard copy is better if you'll like to retell your life story...

That would be so wonderful...

[Magin]

As of the immediate moment, I'm not keeping a journal... however, I need to fix that habit ASAP, especially since that's how I intend to get better step by step at my Japanese. Right now, I can only make extremely simple sentences to describe a day, but I'm hoping that'll change if I keep up a journal.

[Daniel E.]

Do you keep a diary?

No, but I have considered doing so a couple of times in the past.



@New poll added, btw.

[starlol]

Yes. I have a blog. Nowdays i got lazy and i post it as often as once or twice a month.

[ninryu]

No, I'm bad at recording and keeping track.