Journaling

I'm so bloody fat! I stepped on the scale this morning and I was back up above 260. Das ist nicht gut. 

I was thinking today about what the best way to procrastinate writing my novel even more is. Actually I was just letting my mind wander while I drove across vast expanses of the nothingness that is northern Alberta, but it's the same principle. I ended up deciding to take up journaling again. I know that this is a form of journaling, but in my mind I would have 3 separate journals, including the blog. That's the first one. Here I can talk about all the things that I want to put out into the world. If I have an idea about how great a certain podcast is or the pros and cons of a type of footwear, I could just put that down into a private journal, but it's a bit pointless isn't it? I already know I think that way, there's no real reason to document it privately. I do this blog as a way of putting my thoughts out there. It's a way to scream into the void and pretend that my life has meaning and that somebody cares. Ok, let's not get too existential this early in the post. 

The second tier of blog is daily logs. A few months ago I found some of my dad's old day books and it was really fascinating and enjoyable to look back and read about the stuff that he did on a certain day. My favourite, although I don't remember exactly what was written, was the day my sister was born. He wrote something hilariously innocuous like "Amber born today. It was sunny. Took a load of grain to town." Or something to that affect. It was pretty funny to see such a life changing event reduced to a few choice words in a forgotten journal stuffed in the bottom of a china cabinet. I want my (potential) children to have that feeling one day. 

Even more than that though, and this is perhaps a little depressing that I care about this more than my future children reading about my day to day life, I want that data to be logged and catalogued. Think about the wealth of human information and cultural knowledge that was lost over the millennia because people didn't record what they did on a day to day basis. What did a typical day look like for a 10,000 BC era human? How about an ancient Egyptian? We have ideas based on a few records found, but nothing on a grand scale. With the technology we have right now it's easier than ever to mark down what you're doing day to day, and this could potentially have a big influence on future generations. It's cool to think about. 

The final "tier" of journal is the personal journal. This is a hard copy, physical paper journal. I have it sitting beside me on my desk right now. It's the one pictured in the header. This is where I write down my deepest and most intimate thoughts and fears. We've all seen how much I can overshare on a public internet blog, can you imagine the depravity that's in that leather bound book of terrors?!

In all seriousness though, I think it's important to have somewhere private you can write down the most depressing or happy or craziest thoughts that you have. That journal is for everything that I feel like it would be beneficial to write down to help me work through, but I wouldn't want anyone reading it ever. Obviously something like this is hard to talk about, since the very nature of the thing is privacy. I feel like I've built it up as this creepy book of perversions that I pour over in the dark. It's not that bad, it's just stuff I don't want anyone to know about me. Not yet anyway. Maybe when I die I'll be fine with anyone reading through it. Not that it will matter anyway, I'll be dead. 

So as much time as it takes to keep up just the blog itself, this journaling project is something I want to do. Hopefully I can nail down some sort of a routine even for the days I'm on shift. That way I can have a dedicated time to write in these extra journals. It won't take all that long to write down what I did for the day, so as long as I get into the habit of doing it every day it should be easy enough to keep up. The physical writing is a bit harder because it takes longer and it's harder to get myself to start doing it, but I'm not to worried about keeping that one daily. It's more for larger issues I need to write down and work through. 

Do you keep a daily journal? What kinds of things do you write in it? Will you be ok with your kids and/or family and friends reading it, or will you take its contents to your grave? Leave a comment below and let me know your journaling habits. I have a feeling there are at least a few people that have wanted to keep a daily journal but, like me, have ended up making a few entries then failing to keep it up. At least I hope there are others. Don't tell me I'm the only failure in that regard!