As much as I love the idea of keeping a day-by-day unbroken string of entries in my daily diary, I admit I fail at it often. Sometimes a week (or more) will go by without me touching the book by my bed. Yes I know its perfectly alright to just pick up the book and start an entry for today and not worry about the days I missed, but it just feels untidy somehow. Today was such a day for me. I opened my diary and it has been exactly one week since my last entry. Not only that but I will have to say it was a pretty uneventful week because I couldn’t readily bring much of it back to my mind.
My normal process in this situation is to make a list of the days missed on a sheet of paper and work my way backwards, filling in the days that are freshest in my memory and eventually connecting back up to my last entry. Then I simply transcribe them into the diary. It worked okay at first. The weekend was still pretty fresh in my mind. Last week, however, was not in there for some reason.
That’s when I hit on this idea! I grabbed my phone and started flipping back through text messages! They turned out to be great little reminders of things I did with friends or places we ate, or things we talked about. I also found that these messages sparked other memories of the days that weren’t even in the messages. In no time at all I had reconstructed the week with short, but pertinent, entries.
Other places you might go to reconstruct some entries would be your email or your daily calendar. Sometimes all you need is a quick reminder of how the day went and the memories come flooding back in.

I’ll be the first to admit I am not well versed (or even well educated) in keeping a journal electronically.  Up until now I’ve been pretty much a book and pen kind of guy.  However, about a month ago I decided to split my journal keeping in two again.  Keeping a notebook for all the random thoughts and information and keeping a second book for simply recording the events of the day.  I found that I can keep the daily diary much better if I keep the book by my bed and jot things down before I go to sleep.  Its been working pretty well.

As usual one thing leads to another and I find myself thinking about keeping the daily diary in a digital form.  Since it is mainly just text I don’t have to worry about keeping up with any ephimera.  Why not keep the info in a form that makes it easy to search and reproduce?  I could even keep the diary for an entire year and then publish a volume at a print on demand site.  I found myself envisioning shelves books with the year of the diary neatly printed on the spines.

Looking into it further I found that there are a great many ways to keep a diary electronically. There are specialized software packages and websites made especially for keeping your journal in this fashion.  I intend to explore these further in the future, but right now I am not inclined to get involved with anything with only one use.  I also explored Google Docs.  I was almost sold on that option when I discovered Simplenote.  Google Docs work fine on any computer and that was the initial draw.  Unfortunately you can’t edit your documents on your smart phone.  That means you have to sit at a computer and work on your diary (or any other notes).  That’s not a bad thing unless you realize you don’t have to.  Simplenote has smart phone applications that let you edit the same notes you edit on any other computer.  Write something on your phone, it updates your computer.  Update something on your computer and it updates on your phone.  Its all wrapped up in a simple, straight forward interface.

Check out their video:

Hoping to bring more people into the conversation I have decided to experiment with some social media sites.

You can follow me on Facebook here or Twitter here 

Lately I have been thinking about the diary or journal that is kept for a specific purpose.  The single minded book of research notes and such.  Ill post more on them later but in thinking of them I was reminded of the wonderful “Grail Diary” from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I remember the first time I saw the movie.  Doctor Jones (senior) was pouring over the pages of this book, making notes and drawings, all concerning his lifetime obsession with legends of the Holy Grail.  It was a work of art.  Throughout the movie we are treated with glances and peeks into this incredible diary.

When I say it was a work of art, I am not exaggerating.  It was literally the work of artistic Hollywood prop makers.  Even so, what a great addition to any diary enthusiasts collection.  Fortunately this is very possible.  While locating an purchasing the actual used in the film might be out of the realm of possibilities for most of us, there are ways to get some pretty good reproductions.

Firstly, there are prop reproduction companies all over the Internet that produce fine copies of this book, including all the inserts and ephemera stuck between the pages in the movie.  Photos and tickets for Zeppelins included.  The better reproductions are pretty pricey.  I have been looking on eBay and they seem to range (for the nice ones) from between $300-$500.  There are some copies that don’t look quite as authentic for substantially less.

The other route to go is to make your own.  If you have a tiny bit of craftiness or artistic inclinations there are several websites available that supply you with images and instructions for recreating your very own copy of the Grail Diary.

I know that most desks or offices seem to run on sticky notes.  I step into a colleagues office and I see them everywhere.  Stuck to the computer monitor, stuck to the wall or in neat little stacks on the desk.  If you ask someone a question there is a flurry of the little pastel squares to find the answer.  People that don’t get to a sticky pad fast enough will often jot down information on any scrap available and just hope they have that scrap available when they need the information.

In days gone by, long before the advent of computers and even before paper was taken for granted people kept all of the daily business in a a journal. Every transaction, every meeting, every detail of a days business was jotted down and dated.  Somehow, with everyone using computers, handwritten information has lost its importance until its lost.

A good way to declutter your desk as well as save your mind from having to remember where all the scraps of information lay, is to re establish the use of a desk journal.  Of course you can go and purchase a wonderful, leather-bound book to do this.  That might work for you.  Personally I use a thick spiral notebook from the drugs store.  Here’s my technique:

I sit down at my desk in the morning and flip to the next clean page in the notebook.  I take a ruler and make a vertical line down the center of the page and the days date at the top of the page.  Notes, information, to-dos and even phone messages go in the left column separated by at least one blank line and then a horizontal line (I use my ruler for this line as well).  As the day goes on and I take action on any of this information, further notes and actions are made in the corresponding space in the right column.  This gives me one place to look to find any info or answers I need.  It also gives me an archive to go back to to find old information I might need.  More than once I’ve had co workers come to my desk and ask me to check my spiral notebook for a phone number or clients name.

As for sticky notes.  I still use them.  Mainly I use them to give information to other people and they hand me info on them as well.  The trick is to either transcribe the info into the notebook, or, more often than not, I just take a bit of tape and stick the note right to the page.

I think that most people see a journal as a wonderful handwritten log of events and thoughts.  I guess that works for some people.  But the thing to remember is a book can hold so much more than words.  More than drawings even.   Grab your tape and glue and fill the thing up!

Try a couple of pages of movie tickets to chronicle the films you’ve seen

I have a thing for feathers.  There are always one or two stuck in the pages somewhere

Wrist bands, wine labels, snapshots, peices of maps, a dab of the perfect color paint for your bedroom,  A journal can hold it all.

From time to time I scour Ebay for journals that I buy and read (if they are legible)  I have one from the late 19th century that has a recipe for lemon cake I am trying to decipher and in the middle of the book are two locks of hair, delicately spiraled and pinned to the pages.  I’m afraid that the journal was kept with a pencil and it is much faded now, so I have no idea who the hair belonged to or what its significance is to the journaler.  Actually most people are grossed out by it, but I am facsinated by this tangible link to a life or lives from a century ago.

Due to silliness beyond my control, I sort of dropped the ball on this blog.  But I’m back now.

A few weeks ago (Over a month actually) I made a beautiful new journal.  I love it.  I love it too much!  I have not been able to make myself make a single mark in the book!  This isn’t the first time this has happened.  Several times in my journaling life I have purchased, been given, or made a book that seemed just too wonderful for me to write in.  This really tanks for the journal process.  Over the last month I have been journaling, of course, I can barely think or function in an organized manner without scribbling notes and drawing diagrams.  The problem is, lately those notes and drawings have no home.  Scraps of paper, legal pads, sticky notes, envelopes!  Its everywhere, and probably will never be gathered in total to a nice, safe home.

Do not fret.  There is a solution for this (and the sister problem of “my life isn’t exciting enough to write down”).  Its actually a two part solution.  The first and most important part is…..

THE UGLY JOURNAL

When I first had to move from my wonderful southern Florida home back to Tennessee, my life/journaling took an excitement nose dive.  What did I have to record?  Did I care for future generations to see my Tennessee life?  So for about six months—no journal.  But soon the hypergraphia itch set back in.  I had to do something.  I grabbed a bunch of printer paper and put together a slap-dash Japanese stab binding book.  I promised myself that I could make it as ugly and unappealing as possible.  It was the ugliest journal I every carried.  On the other hand it was freeing.

Because the journal was so “ugly” and “unimportant” I was able to re-establish the daily (hourly) habit of keeping thoughts and ideas in one place.  As it turns out, the wildness of the entries in that book made it one of the most interesting in my collections.  I just hope the binding holds up. (the good thing about stab binding is that its easy to re-bind). It definitely helped restart my journaling life.

The second part of jump-starting your journal…

GET BACK TO BASICS

Let your prospects of Leonardo type journaling rest for a while.  Do some basic diary work.  Put down the date and one or two events that happened.  Or better yet—start with yesterday or the day before.  After you get a few days down on paper the habit will kick in.  Don’t over write it.  Just jot something down before bed.

——————

Oct. 2 2009
Finally made PJK post for the week.  Better late than never.  Weather beautiful.  Heard from John.

—————–

That’s all you need.

For my situation I grabbed a Moleskine from my dresser and set it next to my bed.  I promised myself 30 days of basic diary, then I will get to the other book.  Ill probably keep up the basic diary in that book as well.  Just until the new wears off the book and I can go nuts.

Carl Gustav Jung

In the world of Journals there are certain works that stand out as benchmarks.  Oscar Wilde, Leonardo DaVinci, Anne Frank. None of these has been as intriguing to me as the secret Diary of Carl Jung.  Well let’s face it, if you put the word “Secret” in front of anything it automatically becomes intriguing, right?

I have often read about the secret diary, or the Red Book, as its sometimes called, in works of historical fiction or speculative histories.  Being a total mystery, the book lends itself easy to plot devices of all sorts.

Jung took himself on a deliberate adventure into his own world of unconsciousness and spirituality and recorded it all beautifully in his Red Book.  It is from this adventure that he developed the majority of his ideas on psychology.  He explores the ideas of Archetypes, Collective Unconscious, and Anima/Animas.  It’s all in there.

From the images I’ve seen he did this in a very beautiful and focused manner.  The few pages I’ve seen on the Internet look like the pages of a medieval manuscript, complete with calligraphy and illumination.

Here are some Quick Links to use if you want to check it out.

Some images are here on the World of Psychology page

A review of the upcoming publication of the book at  Amazon

A cool little work of fiction that utilizes the red book as a plot device is The Voynich Project: Nephilim Rising

Before she died, my grandmother spent some time writing out a quick history of her family and all the relatives she could think of.  It was just written in a steno notebook, and the notes were pretty much made as she thought of them, but she wanted to leave a little information for the family and I’m glad she did.  These few pages turned out to be things of beauty.  Over looking the dog-eared pages and the haphazard organization of notes, my grandmother had the most wonderful handwriting!  It was elegant and consistent.

My own handwriting has always been substantially less than stellar.  To start with, I’m a lefty.  Nothing works for us.  Notebook spirals cut into our wrists, ink smears, and your hand hides the letter as you make them.  I mixed cursive and printing with wild abandon.  I capitalized letters for no reason (often in the middle of words).  I felt I was just one handwriting analysis away from being committed to an asylum.  Heaven forbid I try to write something on unlined paper.

I’ve found a lot of people think they have this problem.  In an age when computer keyboards are ubiquitous, no time is spent on penmanship.  No one practices and when they scrawl something across the page they think of it as some sort of birth defect.  “I have lousy handwriting” gets the same inflection with “I was born with a vestigial tale.”

This lack of beauty in their handwriting keeps a lot of people from journaling.  Who wants to fill a book with proof of their weak skills?

I decided, one summer to see if I could fix my own scrawl up a bit.  You know what? It was surprisingly easy to do.  I found a great book to help me out.  Its called  Write Now: A Complete Self-teaching Program for Better Handwriting

Its a simple workbook that you can follow that will teach you some of the basics of improving your own handwriting.

Here’s a list of things I learned about improving my handwriting that summer:

• Consistency is key.  When you decide on how to draw a letter (Capitol or Lowercase) stick with it.  Make all your small a’s look the same.  Cross all your t’s in the same spot.  Ascenders and descenders are the same lengths and bend in consistent fashions. The hump on your h should be the same height as the humps on m’s and n’s” This will go a long way to making your handwriting legible
• Pay attention to letter and word spacing.  Letters go VERY close together.  Words should be separated by about an average letters width (technically the width of an m).
• Start SLOW.  You will need time to build the letter forms into muscle memory.  Draw them slowly at first and very quickly you will get smooth with them.  If you see your handwriting deteriorating, slow down again.
• Practice Practice Practice.  When schools actually taught penmanship (when my grandmother learned) they spent HOURS on drills and copying materials.  It burned the skill into their minds and muscles.  Just like any other skill or sport, proficiency comes with repetition of correct form.  Make beautiful “to-do” lists.  Copy a page from your paperback.  Get in some practice.

When you are happy with your handwriting, you will use it much more often.

Oh and here is a quick link concerning how to hold your pen.