[102/366] journaling during a time of major upheaval

[cosmolinguist]

I really liked this article about recording life during the pandemic.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here to some degree, but I also know a lot of us are struggling to do anything much these days and the advice here is focused on making it easy to record our lives.

Examples:

• Keep your to-do lists, recipes, receipts. Collect photos, texts, calendar invites, memes, tweets, articles, playlists, emails…
• Bullet points are fine. Don't make this hard on yourself.
• Nothing is too small or mundane to be recorded.

I've been blogging since I was 20 and I love stumbling across the most "boring" things now and wonder what I was being vague about because I've completely forgotten.

Comments

[askygoneonfire]

Not only should you keep them, but you might also want to donate them; http://www.massobs.org.uk/about/what-s-on/205-covid19

[cosmolinguist]

Oh that's great! How interesting. Thanks for sharing the link!

[redbird]

wonder what I was being vague about because I've completely forgotten.

I also have journal entries that I went back to reread looking for details of something, and those details are the parts I left out because...I'm not sure why. Writing things down makes them too real, too soon? I was worried someone might find and read that journal, past all the pages about other things?

[cosmolinguist]

I really am just bored and tired with a lot of the details of my life at the time, I think. I underestimate how interesting I inevitably find it all in retrospect.

[jesse_the_k]

You are correct!

I am so grateful for 12-years-ago me, when she took the time to write something.

[sfred]

Thanks for sharing the article. I am posting a bit more here, and posting stuff that I might have thought needed more work before, or something? I have a couple of years of page-a-day diary with just bullet points of what I've done, which operate as a to-do list at the time but also, consciously, as a list of things I've done (so I add "phone Dad" to the list after I've done it, or whatever).

I love reading about the mundane bits of other people's lives more than the life of past-me, most of the time, although past-me can be quite absorbing sometimes.

[otter]

I already decided to keep the notecards where I'm writing down fabric mask orders as they come in. I have the invoices, too, but the cards give a summarized view.

I have paper journals going back to my childhood/teens. Blogging wasn't really a thing for me til I was about 40. But that's already 15 years ago.