Journaling @lemmy.world wormer @lemmy.ml 9 mo. ago

How to cope with not having enough time to hand write journaling?

Hey,

I am a big proponent of writing in a journal - I think it really helps me unload the scrambled mess in my brain. The thing is though, writing in my journal takes 1-2 hours of my time - not to mention the time it takes to get into the mood to write for 1-2 hours a day. How do you guys write daily / regularly? When I'm on vacation it's super helpful to write in there, and I wish I could do that during the week. Typing is a solution, but I feel like I write with less efficacy since I don't have a lot of time between sentences. My sentences while writing are a lot more well formed, I think.

What do you guys do?

6 comments

Any writing is better than none. To be able to write "enough" every day sounds like an unimaginable luxury to me, but I still manage to write a little bit every day and I haven't completely lost my marbles yet.
- Do you handwrite or type? I feel like when I type I could write 4 equivalent pages but have de-stressed the equivalent of a half page via handwriting
  
  I type. The ASMR of clicky keys makes up most of the difference in therapeutic benefit.
I keep a couple of journals. One is personal for clearing the junk in my head. That one is handwritten using a favorite fountain pen, ink, and notebook. The other is a quiet little record from work, mostly to process and to jog my memory should it be needed in future. That one is typed in an encrypted note taking app.

Both of them are generally just as-needed. I try to make writing a daily habit, but I also don’t force it if there’s nothing to write about.
If you do it everyday, I think you'll find many days will just be shorter. It seems to depend a lot on what's going on in my life. I've been doing it almost daily for over 20 years, but I've also been typing it all.

I have tried handwriting journaling, but I find it frustrating, especially at the wpm output I'm used to being able to do. Also my handwriting sucks. Or as one of my teachers used to call it - "chicken scratch" haha

The other thing is that once you have years of it, it's pretty neat to be able to search a name or keyword and be able to see your entries about it across years of history. I'm always astounded at just how fallible our memory is.

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