Journaling Just Works

What is this WT?

We’ve a steadily growing community—Welcome to our 18 new members since last week, we're now 483 total!—but participation is growing slower.

My idea is to encourage people in participating more by pushing a weekly theme. It’s an invitation, not a mandatory theme. Feel free to comment about anything else related to journaling, or to start your own thread ;)

This week theme: If by journaling it you could change one thing in the past…

News aren't that great and I thought it might be an interesting way to reuse a classic sifi theme. So, if by journaling it, writing it or skecthing it down in your journal, you could change any past event, not something global like an election, a war, some castatrophic event, or anything like that but something directly linked to you daily or to the people close to you.

1. Would you use that power?
2. What would you change?

From the feelings you have written about, to a cool little doodle you did. And if you do share, with whom and why?

Are you a beginner, or are you considering if you should start a journal? Ask all your questions here. Are you more experienced? Feel free to share tips, tricks, pictures of your journal, anecdotes. Anything related to keeping a journal is welcome in this weekly thread.

Why a WT?

We’ve a steadily growing community—we’re now 465 members! Welcome to all of you!—but we don’t have that much active members.

My idea is to encourage people in participating more by pushing a weekly theme. It’s an invitation, not an obligation. Feel free to comment about anything else related to journaling, or to start your own thread ;)

This week theme: Is your journal analog or digital? Both? Or something else entirely?

Are you more of an analog or a digital user? Do you use both without any hesitation? Do you use a dedicated app like, say, DayOne, or a word processor, or a text editor, something like MS Word, LibreOffice or TextEdit?

Do you have an app you love to use? That helps you journaling?

Disclaimer: don't you dare question my amazing illustrator skills. This is a perfectly fine illustration for the weekly thread, one many pro news outlets would envy us :p

Are you a beginner, or are you considering if you should start a journal? Ask all your questions here. Are you more experienced? Feel free to share tips, tricks, pictures of your journal, anecdotes. Anything related to keeping a journal is welcome in this weekly thread.

Why a WT?

We’ve a steadily growing community—we’re now 456 members, twenty more than last week! hi & welcome to all of you!—but we don’t have that much active members.

My idea is therefore to encourage people in participating more by pushing a weekly theme. It’s an invitation, not an obligation. Feel free to comment about anything else related to journaling, or to start your own thread ;)

This week theme: Nothing is working out

What do you do when stuff aren’t working as expected? Do you journal about them? If so, how? Do you use your journal as tool to try to better understand what’s going or is it just a way to record the event and keep track of them?

https://magicpuppies.glitch.me/home

upon the birth of Moana, Sun, Bear, and Raya, I am starting to record the history of Lana, Misha, and pups. It is a great feeling. Basically, before I started doing this was prehistory and now there is a record of history. I bet alot of you know what this feels like. Now pics and stories are saved and revisitable.

Dont worry contains no ads, monetization, google analytics, any of that. It's pure; like a sacred thing should be. I have one page to add entries and another to see them.

Anyway, what u think? :)

Are you a beginner, or are you considering if you should start a journal? Ask all your questions here. Are you more experienced? Feel free to share tips, tricks, pictures of your journal, anecdotes. Anything related to keeping a journal is welcome in this weekly thread.

Why a WT?

The community keeps getting new members—we’re now 436 members, hi & welcome to all of you!—but we don’t have much active members.

My idea is therefore to encourage people in participating more by pushing a weekly theme. It’s an invitation, not an obligation. Feel free to comment about anything else related to journaling, or to start your own thread. You can also let me know if you don't like to see a Weekly Thread. I won't be mad ;)

This week theme: I (don’t) care about my privacy!

Digital journal often offers some way to encrypt our entries, analog journaling not so much. Anyone opening a journal will be able to read it which can lead to some sad situations. But even if that journal was stored in a safe, or in a locked drawer, seeing us journaling may draw attention and raise questions form friends, SO, children, and even from the cat or the dog!

Do you worry about that? How you deal with the privacy of your journal?

I’m very happy to report that I have yet again updated the community sidebar with a link to a brand new community.

[email protected] is

a community for stationery users and lovers. We talk about pens, fountain pens, notebooks, planners, pencils, mechanical pencils, markers… and in general about everything we use for writing, journaling or drawing.

It’s great to see more communities around interesting topics. And this one obviously is. Well to analog journalers/writers among us at least ;)

Are you a beginner, or are you considering if you should start a journal? Are you more experienced? Feel free to ask all your questions here, to share tips, tricks, pictures of your journal, anecdotes. Anything related to keeping a journal is welcome in this weekly thread.

Why weekly?

We have a steadily growing community and we’re now 418 members! But we don’t have that much active members (which is fine, don’t get me wrong). My idea with the weekly thread is to encourage people to participate and to hopefully give it more visibility. It also makes it simpler for lazy-me to regularly publish new content ;)

If it needs to be said, you don’t have to post your questions, discussions in this weekly thread. Not at all. You also don’t have to talk about this week’s theme. It’s just a trigger or an invitation you can completely ignore. I would even encourage you to talk about anything else, as well as to start your own threads.

This week theme

Do you journal about all the shit happening in the world, far or nearby, or is your journal more intimate?

Welcome to our new members!

The Weekly Thread is the place for everyone to share content and ask questions. Are you a beginner, or are you considering if you should start a journal? Ask all your questions here. Are you more experienced? Feel free to share tips, tricks, pictures of your journal, anecdotes. Anything else related to journaling is welcome

This week theme: What’s worth journaling?

I regularly read on the Reddit journaling sub—no doubt we will soon be able to read as much interesting conversations right here, in our own Lemmy journaling community ;)—people complaining that they don’t have an interesting enough life to write about it.

Neither is mine. And That’s fine. For me, events don’t matter much, it’s how they impact me and how I perceive them.

What about you? (I will share some details about my uneventful journal in the comments).

I updated the sidebar to add a new ‘Notebooks' community, a place to, I quote,

Share your collection, use cases, note-taking methods, pens, and accessories as you see fit.

You are welcome to share your journaling here too. Anything involving a notebook is welcome!

[email protected]

Obviously, I'd rather see journaling content posted around here, a dedicated community, but that's absolutely fine to do it anywhere as long as it encourages people to journal more; to talk more about how they do it, and at least as important, if it encourages newcomers to give journaling a chance.

We have no excuse anymore as we now have our dedicated journaling community, a fountain pen one, and now also a notebook community. Maybe we should have one dedicated to the humble but so useful ballpoint pen/gel pen too ;)

This week theme: Are you an addict to stationery?

Are you a beginner, or are you considering if you should start a journal? Ask all your questions here. Are you more experienced? Feel free to share tips, tricks, pictures of your journal, anecdotes. Anything else related to journaling is welcome in this weekly thread, don't hesitate.

Edit: I forgot to welcome new subscribers. Like, really what was I even thinking?
So—let's all pretend I did not forget—welcome!

Welcome to all our new members—hi!

You're beginner, or you're simply considering if you should start keeping a journal? Ask all your questions here. You're more experienced? Feel free to share pictures of your journal, tips & tricks, anecdotes.

This week theme: Do you like your journal pages to look perfect?

Anything related to keeping a journal is welcome in this weekly thread.

A warm welcome to our new members. There is not a lot of activity going on on the surface but our numbers are steadily growing (351 this very morning!), which is neat!

This the second issue of our Weekly Thread, where anyone is welcome to post pictures, questions, anecdotes, suggestions, tips and tricks, your latest great find, absolutely anything related to journaling (at least remotely)

Did you treat yourself with some fancy or not so fancy office supply? Or maybe you're testing out a new journaling app or workflow? Did the dog ate your brand new journal or chew on your new Montblanc fountain pen? Anything else, more or less serious?

Are you a beginner or you're not sure if should start keeping a journal? It's a good place to ask any question ;)

So much this (link to Reddit).

Don't worry about not looking great, or clever, or whatever you consider a flattering image of yourself when you read back your journal in a few days, months, years, or decades—yep, I'm that old.

That's fine. No, that's great.

Believe me, no matter what, as long as you wrote honestly about it (not in the sense of writing some supposed indisputable deep truth, in the sense of honestly writing what you were thinking and feeling back then, at that time, no matter how silly) it's worth it and it will be worth reading back.

You have no idea how dearly I miss my old journals were I wrote about my first true love, as a little boy, and later about my second true love, as a young teen. And also, no matter how unflattering it is for me, all I may have written about my many crushes and my countless failed attempt at flirting. Thinking about it, I must have been in love every single day at that time and it must have been a real pain for my best friend who endured all of it—we're still best friends all those years later ;)

Some forty+ years later, I still remember V. wonderful blue eyes and how she smiled and her eyes too, and how badly I wanted to impress her. And how fucking terrorized and excited I was the day I rang her door, completely out of the blue, because it was the last opportunity I could ask her out. I was 14, I had long hair, flowers in one hand (like, really) and my face was tomato red. I still remember how stupidly I smiled when the door opened to let her dad out. He was about to leave for his job, wearing his... cop uniform. He looked at me for more or less an eternity, and the more he looked at me the more I was dying inside.

You can believe me when I tell you that, he was not happy to meet me, and that V. and I did not end up getting married :P

Post pictures, questions, anecdotes, suggestions, tips and tricks, your latest great find, anything related to journaling in this weekly thread.

Yep, I'm still trying to find a way to encourage more people to participate, so feel free to use this thread, or obviously to start your own ;)

I updated the sidebar with a new (new to me, at least) community called 'Web Revival' that wants to be "A movement focused on capturing the creativity and openness of the early Internet."

[email protected]

At first glance, it's not strictly a journaling or writing related community but I think it's intimately related (and very interesting) as it's very close to what motivates many of us in keeping a journal—the ability to make events/time/thoughts truly ours and not just things we're remotely looking at.

Blogs, that used to be called 'online journals' you know, personal websites, Small Web, small forums (like the communities, here on Lemmy) and so on made exactly that for the Web. They made it our Web. Not just a product we're allowed to consume. We made it and its content.

All those things that once were popular and are not so much nowadays—I'm exaggerating, they're still popular? Well, maybe but allow me to ask this: how many of us go check our respective profiles when we participate in a discussion, here on Lemmy, and when we see that there is a link to a personal blog or whatever how many of us do click the link? Yeah, I thought so ;)

All those small personal spaces made the Web a unique place, so highly personal and so rich. There was need for an algorithm and we had none. This space was slowly invaded and pillaged by corporate bullshit and money, like mold growing staining everything with ads and marketing. Ruining every single thing they touched.

Humbly, I used to be active in that pre-corporate Web, my first website dates back to the mid 90s, if not earlier. So, it could very well me being old and nostalgic but when I stumbled upon that new community it almost feel like when I open to write into my journal—a nice and comfy place, home.

I dearly miss that Web. Exactly like I miss receiving and writing personal letters handwritten or not, what matters is that they're personal, instead of emails or messages—says the exact same guy that has been not writing back to a very special letter he received way too many days ago! I really have no shame ;)

Once again, let me know if you don't think this community is related to journaling. I hope I made it clear I think it is but I also don't own our community and I'm open to discussion.

Have a nice day, and maybe go have a look at that community? [email protected]

The question doesn’t mean much if you're a digital journaler as you probably already have a synced copy available on your phone. But for the analog journalers out there this can mean mean the difference between having a journaling and having... lost our journal. Every single page of it.

There is no such thing as syncing and rarely any backup of our notebooks. So, carrying it everywhere we go is a real risk.

I don’t carry my journal with me because I know I will lose it. That's a scientific fact based on personal experiences (way too many of them) of losing a lot of things, from my keys and countless umbrellas, up to a brand new laptop (yeah, that's me, and would you believe it when I went back to get the laptop back it was not there anymore) as well as, you guessed it, my journal.

So, my journal stays at home.

What I do carry everywhere I go, outside as well as from one room to another in our apartment, is a pocket notebook of some sort and a pen where I quickly write stuff down. I don’t try to write great literature not even full sentences, it’s merely a few key words and symbols that have zero meaning to anyone but me and that work (wonders) as a reminder when I’m back at my desk and I write whatever I was thinking about when I jotted those down in that pocket notebook. And that small notebook, I don’t care much losing it.

For years, I used to get those free but real handy small notebooks with a tiny but decent ballpoint pen attached to it, from the pharmacy next street. It was their gift around New Year, knowing I quite enjoyed them, they would let me pick a bunch of them (not enough for a whole year but still, that was nice. This year, they gave me a... pencil pouch. It's an odd pharmacy, I suppose ;)

I never kept a journal consistently because writing my thoughts felt like giving anyone access to them, and thus, I felt pressured to write like an eloquent Socratic philosopher just in case anyone DID read it.

An interesting discussion on r/journaling about being honest, or not, in one's journal. And how the OP found it to be tiring.

What do you think?

And do you lie or simply make yourself look better in your journal, just in case some would read it?

I tend to agree with the OP. But, I also understand that desire to please and to be liked (and to not be judged) just in case someone would read that journal, even without our consent.

I also think that when one stops being honest in their journal there is a very real risk to lose interest in journaling altogether. Which I would not want to happen.

I did lie for a while in y journal, openly I mean. I called that being 'hypocritical' but it was only me lying to myself and to that hypothetical and very unwelcome reader. It did not last long, it was during a very challenging time with a lot of self-doubt... not that long ago as a matter of fact. I stopped doing that soon after I started as it was exhausting and not very helpful. And not fun at all.

Also, there are much simpler way to tell lies to an audience. Being an actor or a politician are two obvious ways of doing it. Or be a writer and write (or sketch) stories in which you lie. Not all stories are lies, but many are and that's perfectly OK.

Stories are great as in them one can pretend absolutely anything. And they're also much simpler to share than a journal, if that's what you're wanting to do. I mean, beside traditional publishing in books or magazines there are many places and communities one could share their ~~lies~~ stories to an audience more willing to believe them ;)

I see quite a few new members have joined our small community in the last few weeks which is great! (Edit 16th Dec: we passed the 300 members!)

A warm welcome to every single one of you!

I was wondering if you would be interested in post where everyone would be able to present themselves in a few words if they wanted to, maybe share a little info about themselves and their journaling habits or why they're considering journaling?

No obligation, obviously, and nothing too personal should probably be shared but here it is.

If the discussion gains enough traction I may pin it as a permanent welcome post and an invitation to new members to introduce themselves. If it doesn't, well so be it.

I will introduce myself in the comments, read you there ;)

This year, I wanted to start keeping a reading journal.

That’s certainly not a revolutionary idea, but I still managed to get stuck on a simple technical consideration: should I use a dedicated journal? Or write them in my existing journal, next to my usual entries? But then, how would I be able to easily spot my reading entries and distinguish them from the journal entries?

In the end, I decided I would do everything in my existing journal but that I would write reading entries in a different color from standard journal entries. It’s simple enough while still making it very easy to instantly tell them apart.

What would you do?

Edit Jan 4th: re-uploaded the banner with the correct version—yep, I'm that professional :p

Like announced two weeks ago, I wanted to update the banner and icon for the new year. Here they are.

Let me know what you think about them. I saved a copy of the old files, should everybody prefer the previous version, it'll be easy to revert back.

And once again, a big thx to @SomeAmateur for your remarks and suggestions regarding my first proposition. They helped me a lot, hopefully ending up with something nicer ;)

It's the first time I'm so proud of what I did !

Have you decided on a New Year resolution related to journaling? Maybe to start journaling? Or to journal more, or more regularly? Or you want to start sketching in your journal, or to decorate it in some other fashion? Something else?

And have you decided on a backup resolution, in case your main resolution does not go as planned?

For 2025, I’ve decided on two things related to my reading journal. They are not huge or radical changes, mind you. They’re stuff I want to get better at because I know they will help a lot my readings.

1. I want to read less randomly. So, I have made a six month worth reading list (6 months to begin with, to see how well it goes) that I will stick to no matter what. My issue is that I have a real tendency to drop whatever book I’m reading and start reading whatever new or shiny book I can get my hands on, which doesn’t help me move forward in the other book(s).
2. To systematically—systematically, like in ‘making it into a true habit to’—write down a short review (summary + comment) for every book I’ve read. Was well as for anything else I will watch or listen to during that same 6 months time frame. I’ve been doing that for essays and for other serious stuff already, but I've recently realized I could not remember that well old novels and short stories I've read. So, I think it’s worth doing it for those too.

My backup plan is kinda cheating as it's there to help me not fail in my main resolutions (to read less randomly, and take more notes about the books I read):

1. Take reading notes with every single book (or podcast). Not summarizing or analyzing it in any ways, just jotting down stuff and impressions as they occur to me. Like I used to do much younger, writing down in the margins or underlining passages save that this time I will not be doing it in the book itself (most of what I read is borrowed and when it is not I will give either give it away or resell it after reading). Doing that, even if I fail to write the short review in time I should still be able to quickly read through my notes and make something out of them.
2. The reading list itself contains more books than I can read in six months. That is on purpose as I want to be able to switch book if I realize I can’t read one or another. For example, in that list there is Proust À la recherche du temps perdu one I’ve already tried (and failed) multiple times to read in the last 30 years. I still want to give it a chance but I know there is a high probability I will fail again and since I certainly don’t want to turn reading into a chore, if it happens once more Proust doesn’t suit me I still want to be able to switch to another author. The only thing that matters here is that I stick to the reading list.

Btw, let me know if you're interested in looking at that list or if it's something you would like to discuss more?

It comprises both English and French books but should cover a wide range of topics, from essays (philosophy, sociology, stuff like that) to fictions, spirituality, poetry, as well as plays. Starting with my undisputed favorite French playwright next to Racine: Molière). But fear not, if there are indeed quite a few classics in that list (some older than Molière) there is also a few more recent authors... and don't forget it's just for 6 months, so the second half of the year could easily and entirely be devoted to our contemporaries ;)

I find I get some really quality introspection / observations around this time of year, and also just during holidays in general. Maybe it's just the time off, or maybe it's having an event to write around. I'm not sure.

Do other folks especially look forward to writing their thoughts down during the holidays? Like I'm visiting family for a couple days, and I can't wait to document the memories that haven't even occurred yet.