Everyone Needs to Keep a Journal

I’m going to try something new. I’m going to start writing in my Moleskine pocket notebook again while also updating my blog on a daily basis. I’ve been building up to this for a while now, I think, and I’m glad to finally be pulling the trigger on it. Ever since I first started this blog, I’ve been bothered by the quality of my posts. I’ve been told by friends that I shouldn’t be bothered by it because I’m doing what I need to be doing to help myself. I agree with them, but I know I can do better, and that’s the aspect that’s bothering me the most. I don’t think the quality of my posts will improve any time soon, but that’s the path I’m trying to build for myself. There are things I want to write about but they’re really personal things that I don’t want to write about publicly. Sometimes I sit in front of my laptop with an empty Byword document for 10-15 minutes trying to come up with something to write about because what I really want to write about is personal and fuzzy and all I want to do is blare my emotions out on the page and not worry about cohesion or comprehensibility. Cue my trusty Moleskine notebook.

I’m giving these sessions a topic which I won’t reveal publicly, unfortunately, because it’s personal, but I hope that I will improve the quality of my life tremendously by doing this. I can accomplish some great things when I’m focused on a single thing, and I hope to accomplish some great things here. It’s just a start, and I won’t see what I’ve built immediately, but if I keep at it on a daily basis for a few months, I know I’ll be able to see the progress I’ve built during that time. I’m excited, and I’m scared, and I don’t know what I’m in for. I’m adding yet another habit on top of my already crowded routine, but I hope it’ll work out in the end. I’m confident it will, in fact.

At the same time, I’m planning to steer my blog more toward the technological side of things. I enjoy writing about technology and how it helps me live the life I want. I’ve been writing notes on a few of the apps I’ve been using regularly in hopes that I can write some in-depth articles on them in the future. I want to analyze how I use apps, how they help my life, and how I can improve my workflows by studying my habits and my goals. I’ve been singing the praises of Vesper recently, a beautiful and very useful note-taking app for iOS, but every day I find a new use for it or discover that a use I thought Vesper was well suited for turned out not to be the case. I want to study that and experiment and see what I’m actually trying to have this app and apps like these help me achieve. Why do I take notes? What are their purposes, and how do they help me? And how does Vesper help me here? These are simple questions that I don’t know the answers to right now. A few of the apps I want to write more about like this are Day One, nvAlt, Pinboard, and Anki, and, of course, Vesper.

I don’t know if I will be successful with this. I don’t know if one week from now I decide that I was being too enthusiastic and decide to stop this. I am feeling excited right now, but excitement fades quickly once I’m faced with the acts of working and thinking and actually producing something worthwhile. Imagining great things is easy; actually creating great things is hard.

If it’s not hard, it’s not worth doing, right?