In a Discord community, I am a part of the journaling app Day One came up again, months after I stopped using it.
I've been journaling for the whole year but have done so mostly using pen and paper. Every morning, after drinking my coffee and reading the daily chapter of Robert Greene's latest book, I sit down at my desk and journal.
I write a daily recap in the Japanese version of the Hobonichi Techo. Thanks to its Tomoe River paper, I can use my favourite fountain pen and favourite ink. It's a blast; I love it. And if you are willing to get real nerdy, read this post on Tomoe River paper. (Unfortunately, it seems as if TomoeGawa might not produce Tomoe River paper anymore. Time to look for alternatives.)
Galen Leather
But even though I do – very obviously – love journaling by hand, it misses a few things: What about pictures and other metadata? What about random thoughts that don't make sense being linked to a specific day? (The Techo is mostly a planner. Every page is for one day. Even if Day One works by days, too, a random thought can live on its own as a single entry. It doesn't have to share)
So, I will try Day One again. For a month or so, I will try the following experiment:
- Write morning pages using the iPad and Day One. The goal is to write without thinking. I am faster at doing this on a keyboard than by hand, so it might allow me to edit less while writing. It doesn't matter what gets through my head, I'll write it down.
- Reply to the daily prompts in Day One.
- Log pictures, random thoughts, and metadata like how much I slept (tracking this for another experiment) and if I exercised.
- Write in my Techo every evening to recap the day, what I am grateful for, what has occupied me while it is still fresh.
It might not work out. I might forget to journal; I might write the same thing twice, I might get bored of using one of the two methods.
I'll check back in a month or so.