my everything journal
I love the new yet old threads on creating a single journal and having it be the source of truth for daily writing. I started this a few years ago when working. Iād come back to my room and just write. The files were changed out every year. The journals marked life changes for me. Finding a new job. Leaving old relationships. Living differently. In a small room miles from the house. The room was a quiet affair. Shared the house with 4 or 5 others. We all worked. At night I would write.
The whole journal thing then changed and I started with Day One. I would go for years with it. It became the everything journal. At some point though in 2023 it became difficult. The journal had become something else. Something I did not like. Then I knew what I had to do. I had to reboot. Take things back. Find the way I wanted to write. I went through daily notes for awhile. I rarely kept old ones. Instead I would write new markdown daily notes in whatever.
then at some point -- change
I guess in 2023 I tired of the whole thing or I found the journals to have way too much in them that I no longer wanted. Really what I discovered, at least for me, is there is no value in the old journals. They are steps I have already taken. Things I've done. The real benefit has always been in the current time. Keeping a daily note soon seemed like the collection of so many little notes all that could not join together to tell a story unless I went back and linked things together. Found the things which whispered or called out to me. But more than doing that, I wanted a change. I futzed with journaling for awhile and did daily notes in markdown and then I went back to a single journal. Some would call it a OBTF. This thing became the source for me and I have found that a lot of the writing I want or intend on doing springs from the everything journal I keep. It gets all the weight. All the strange things. Sometimes a photo or two. Each day is an H2 so in obsidian I can link to the headers where I want. Now I just write it all out. I don't know how big or when I will change for another everything journal. I hope by end of the year. Then my 2025 journal will be retired somehow. Or I will keep the single file with all the words and emotions and feelings therein. I will have started blog posts, different things about where we go. Whatever springs from the source.
So what have I found with this approach and why stick with it.
- the one journal is a single file and much easier to maintain than 365 little files over a year and then so many over longer but I never did keep the journal files way long. The real thing is the connection in a single file from a day to the next. Not a file to the next.
- the use of the everything journal as the source. I like this idea a lot. The journal file becomes a departure and arrival place for me to record, find, get mad at, yell and scream to the void.
- writing in clear text with some markdown just seems easier with apps we can use. It has really become the words but yet I use a single obsidian thing which makes the journal seem more personal. The ability to link to a day and see it pop up in the view. So nice.
- the weight of the words. I don't do physical journaling. Ever. I could probably fall in love with it but for my handwriting or lack of. Instead, the writing in some app becomes faster, gives me more words to weigh, feelings to feel, life to go check out. At the coffee shop or bus. Where I want to just write, the single file always is right there.
- everything is added to the bottom of the file. I don't know why. It just is. The file can grow however it wants. By December it will be bigger than it is now. Then I will put it to sleep and find my new one. Add a new cool image on top. A new saying to take me along.
there you have it yet you don't
Because this approach works for me. My writing springs forth from the single thing. Your mileage I bet will vary wildly. We all have our reasons and what we find to either journal or not. I don't know bullet journaling or interstitial or whatever. I just know when I want to write a thing, I write the thing. Short or long or longer. The journal in some ways took the place of a person in my life and still does. This confidant. This person I did not have and still for many things do not. My daughter here is the confidant. The private person I tell things to. That listens and understands and relates. The only person like that. As much as I love my wife, we cannot talk that way. I've tried. I do think it bothers my wife that her daughter and I would share the private things far beyond what we talk about. Its like a private place. Soon my friend R will get back and I will have the person that did this for me for months. The everything journal is still everything to me no matter. Its more than a OBTF because its everything. I guess I could call it the EBJF or the "everything big journal file".
But really its the place where things go and I escape.
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