Journals for Future Me
I've been keeping a journal for over five years now. It didn't start as "I'm going to write a journal every day for five years." That would have been overwhelming. It just happened. I wanted to keep track of some ideas that were forming. Then it very quickly became a general thing.
Normally I write it every other day, recounting today and yesterday. It's not very deep and meaningful. It's very much "went here, did that." With a side of "stressing about this." Sometimes I write about what I'm going to do that day, to psych myself up. Then come back with the update.
It's great in several ways. Firstly, and possibly most importantly, writing it down helps me remember stuff better. It's like having it happen twice. Double the chance to remember. Then, writing is how I process things. It helps me file stuff away in my brain.
It's handy to have a record of where I was and what I was doing. My alibi logs. It fills in some of the blanks emails or calendars can't cover. It doesn't help in "when did this thing happen?" situations because it's not indexed or even really searchable. But the entries are short enough I could find something if I really needed to.
Not a benefit I foresaw, but a really interesting thing, is when I occasionally look back at a certain day, or the same day a year ago and see the preoccupations. It helps give me perspective. Things I was worried about that by now I've completely forgotten. Times I look back on with rose-tinted glasses but actually when I read my entries, it was just normal. The same comings and goings and hassles as ever.
Weirdly, despite all this detail, there's still stuff I'm missing. I need to get better about being more specific. No more "listening to this new song." Name the song!
It's addressed to myself. I might never again read the words but I'm writing it for a future me.