Journaling

While I've never kept a journal going, I do keep track of trips in my pickup. It started when we had a rent house. Actually a house we were trying to sell but the market was bad and for a few years we rented.

I kept track of my mileage to and from, along with a note of why I went (mow the lawn, shovel snow, unclog drains etc etc. The accountant told me to keep if for everything I did in my truck and to highlight the times I went to the house.

The house is long gone but I still keep a record of where I went, why, and the gas mileage. I also keep track of tire rotations, oil changes and all that stuff.

I've expanded it to include a record of long journeys such as weekend trips. I have a complete record of what rest stops are good, bad, indifferent, fast food stops along the road, restaurants and motels where we stayed, what we did etc.

While I was doing farmers market, I used it to record trips there, what sold and what didn't as well as notes about my cost, my selling prices and ultimately what my profits where.

So I guess you would call that a travel journal combined with a vehicle logbook. All this goes back many years and I've got a stack of notebooks in a box in the closet. They cover my current vehicle as well as the old one I had when all this started.

I have kept paper journals and notebooks. I shredded them last year, but they're mostly transcribed and ZIPped away. I have kept online travel journals; they're packed away now, too. I have kept audio journals, stacks of cassette tapes; I should wipe those. I keep digital story-idea and to-do and random-thought lists. But I no longer record most of my activities. I feel no need.

Audio journaling: For years, my best friend was a small reporter's cassette recorder, then a mini-cassette recorder, now a small digital audio recorder. Besides recording sounds like the noises of a rail switch yard at night, I've found the device invaluable for capturing ideas, songs, to-do's, while I'm moving: walking, biking, driving. Momentum generates words.

My journal

I have kept a journal since middle school. The ones I writer these days are very different from the ones I wrote then, as you can imagine. The one's then were about traumatic events (child abuse, rape, and similar). Now I keep two journals. One is for sexual fantasies. The other is for life's blessings and the people with whom I share my life (and pets). Over the years, I have found journaling to be a very valuable tool and practice.

Journal/Diary

From what I can read here, keeping a journal evolved from the diary of younger years.
It's a purely feminine cultural phenomenon.
I've never known a boy to keep a diary and the men say it's more like a notebook.
My life has always been so hectic and unpretictable that I could never have kept a diary.
Even now that I don't work anymore.
Many years ago, I had a thick file full of ideas. Some I wrote, most never saw the light of day.
A few years back, I perused it... then dumped it. I'm not the same person I was.
Now, I write story outlines in Word, then get back to work on my novels.
I know most are just for fun. I like to play with words.
But a few will be submitted here soon.

I kept a dream diary in my last year of high school and a couple of years at university. I also wrote a lot of stream of consciousness poetry, which served the same purpose as a diary. Back then, I also wrote, wrote, wrote letters. I still have all of the letters I received in reply, long ago, but no longer have my half of the conversation. That was in the seventies, before computers, before photo copiers. I didn't even have a typewriter. Long, long hand written letters. I wonder how what the girls thought of me, those girls I wrote to way back then. We kept writing, until we didn't.

It's a time capsule. My children will find them all when I die. Fuck, Dad, was that really you? We never knew.

I expect I'm the exception to the rule stated in the previous post, that it's almost entirely a feminine phenomenon, as I am a man - then just a boy. Perhaps it's my anima rearing her head.

Now, it's all in my head, and spills out into what I write on Literotica.

Perhaps some of your writings are worth sharing. They sound unusually interesting....

journaling

I've kept journals on and off all my life, but only in the last four years or so have I been more diligent about it. It's part of my spiritual practice, to record my thoughts and observations, sort out cosmological ideas, and my own code of ethics. I have a separate journal for story ideas, mostly character sketches, situational ideas that I don't want to forget. I find it useful for getting to know a character, their motivations, and how they interact with others. When I get an idea it kicks around in my head for awhile but I never truly 'know' a character until I start writing, then he/she takes on his/her own personality.