9 :: Journalling...

Do you like to journal? For me, my blog is one way I like to record and remember snippets from my life. This digital age has made it all so easy to combine words and pictures. I can't remember the last time I actually printed photographs, let alone put them into an album.

I've never been one for keeping a traditional diary with thoughts and observations from my days, although I have, until recently, always had a small diary in my bag for jotting down the obvious stuff such as birthdays and dental appointments. Of course, these days all that is on my phone and with the launch of iCloud, it gets duplicated seamlessly onto my desktop calendar without me lifting a finger! I do have a calendar hanging in my kitchen but I tend not to write on it anymore and so I'm thinking that is a tradition that has reached the end of the line for me.

I think I have mentioned on here before that I wrote a monthly diary for Tom for eight years. It is something I have written about in my book within the chapter on Creating Memories. That is so important to me now - the actual hard copy of the diary and the job of remembering. I don't want to take it for granted anymore. So now, journalling is almost compulsive but will never to be a chore to me. I think there is a place for private thoughts and ones to share. These are some of the ways I'm going about it at the moment.

Last month I entered a give-away over at The Sometimes Crafter on the subject of journalling and to my delight, I won! It arrived at the beginning of the week and I wish I could receive mail addressed like this more often!

I chose the she journal as I loved the simplicity, the way it looked and that it had some prompts in it too. I am going to save it until the new year now, although it is sitting on my desk daring me to make a start in it.

In September I spotted this over at Christina's too and although it took me a few weeks to get going, I got stuck in. I have chosen not to publish my list online (or in the Flickr group), which I suppose isn't very sociable but I have enjoyed dreaming up my lists each week.  Of course, it was a great excuse to go and choose another little notebook.

At the beginning of 2011, I had a Simple Diary on the go. Again, it is full of prompts and questions to get you going and think outside of the box. Each day you had to choose one of three words/phrases to describe your day, a bit like a multiple choice. For example on 18th February, I could choose from getting there :: outspoken :: like spaghetti then you had to explain why. It's very tongue-in-cheek and fun to fill in. I loved that the actual date wasn't written in (you filled that bit in yourself) so it didn't matter if there were gaps. I hate to feel pressurised in doing something!

My latest squeeze in my need to record and remember is, of course, to be found on my phone. Momento was a staff pick in the app store a couple of months ago and I succumbed immediately. It's a great place to keep all your online stuff too as it streams all your feeds into the diary, such as Flickr, Facebook and my blog. I can add something profound when the thought strikes me (that was said tongue-in-cheek, btw!) and you can add photos, tags and locations. 

I do wonder sometimes, if, in years to come, anyone will be actually interested in all this information other than me. I'm hoping that my descendants will want to know a little about me and my day to day life. Because, as Katie over at Gadanke says, we should celebrate our story.