I took a hiatus from my daily journal, hoping that it would open up some time for other writing projects. It did free up some time (this blog is partly the result of that) but I think it was a mistake. So I’m jumping back in, using the same tool I’ve used for the past decade.
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I don’t know when I started keeping a regular journal. I know I had a journal back in my first year of college—1979-80 (ack!)—because I remember finding out that a friend had read some of it without my permission (ick!). But the earliest journals I have are some Gregg Rule Steno Books from 1984, when I traveled out to Minnesota to join a band that was going to Europe (mostly the Netherlands) as a “mission,” under the auspices of Youth for Christ, if I remember correctly.
It’s painful reading. I was beginning to grapple with my faith, but unable to think outside well-trodden habits of thought, especially the way I interpreted the Bible, and why I interpreted it that way. I was also struggling to see myself as a real musician, as having the potential to make a living in a profession that requires a lot more dedication and skill than I had ever shown (or ever would show, for that matter). I was encountering new ways of thinking politically, too: Europe is still “the West,” but it was definitely not Reagan-era, conservative Christian America. (I never considered myself part of the Moral Majority, but it was definitely in the air.)
And, unfortunately, I was avoiding almost everything that I would have found interesting today; there are gaps in the record, mostly involving experiences—the travel, the places, the relationships. I was way too much in my head.
I’m sure that says something important about me.
I kept a journal off and on for the next couple decades, but I started taking it more seriously when I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I don’t know that I recommend the whole book—I guess I don’t not recommend it—but I found her practice of “morning pages” to be helpful. (Brian Koppelman, one of the writers of Rounders and Billions and host of an interesting podcast, swears by them.)
In their strictest form, morning pages involve 20 minutes of free-hand freewriting, first thing every morning. But I ran into two problems with this—and these problems remained even when I abandoned strict morning pages: the lack of privacy, and the difficulty of reviewing what I’d written.
Enter The Journal.
I bought The Journal just about 11 years ago, and have used it with various levels of consistency since. I chose it because it directly addressed both of the issues I mentioned above:
- Privacy and security: The Journal is encrypted and password protected. And since I’ve created a strong password, having learned much from the obsessive Steve Gibson from the Security Now podcast, it is pretty well protected from outsiders. This is important: one of the tenets of freewriting (and I’ve extended this to all my journal writing) is freedom from outside judgement. I have sworn to myself never, ever to show what I’ve written in my journal to anyone. This allows me to explore issues much more deeply, writing things I’d never say publicly, and sometimes don’t even believe, as I work through the labyrinth that is my life.
- Searchability: I’m sure I’m the only one who experiences this, but I often have to deal with the same issues or problems time after time after time. With my paper journals, it was hard to find all the previous times that I’d addressed an issue—I’d spend hours skimming pages from multiple notebooks. With The Journal, I can run a typical search and find what I need.
I’ve learned to look to technology to fulfill an existing need, rather than letting technology create new needs. As such, I keep my use of The Journal pretty simple. It has many features that I don’t use—I don’t even know what all of them are, since I don’t use them, but you can look at the features list if you’re interested. But it does just about everything I want it to.
The one exception: it’s not ubiquitous. It can be loaded onto a cloud drive—I use Dropbox for this—so I can open it on any computer that I have full access to (a laptop and two desktops). I sometimes wish for a version for my phone or the web, but I get it: there’s always a trade-off between security and convenience. And while I’m comfortable with the reduced security that comes with keeping my journal on Dropbox, I wouldn’t be comfortable with the additional reduction in security that would come with access through my phone or the web. (That said, it does allow imports from a number of sources, including another of my central tools, Evernote.)
David—the guy behind The Journal, the David behind DavidRM Software—just released a new version. It’s not cheap—it runs $65 for new users, $30 for an upgrade—but there’s a 45-day trial period, so you can really get in there to try it out. I didn’t bother with the trial period for my upgrade—I just paid for it. It’s been worth every dollar, and I see no reason to assume it will be any different this time.
[Updated 1/2/20: This post originally had no affiliate link. I changed my mind on that, so here’s my affiliate disclosure and, if you are interested, why I made the change.]