[personaldev] Keep a diary

[mattbell]

I found my old diary from my senior year of high school and reread it.  (It's a file on my hard drive.  I keep everything.)  Holy shit folks, it's worth keeping a diary.  Not only is it useful at the time, but it also will dramatically appreciate in value as it ages.  It's the intellectual version of preserving your embryonic stem cells.  More than anything else, it will help weave the disparate threads of your evolving personality and mindset into a coherent trajectory through your life.  Themes will recur, and you can witness the birth and propagation of dramatic changes.  Blogging is great for encouraging yourself to share via social reinforcement, but the lack of self-censoring that happens in a more private setting is incredibly valuable.  As for Facebook and Twitter, unless you use them *really* well, it just isn't the same.  How do I know?  I wrote a twitter-length summary of what I did and felt every day for a year in college, and reading it over again isn't nearly as valuable.  Reading the summaries can sometimes trigger more full memories, but it doesn't give a good sense for what *I* was like back then.

One thing my past self was very aware of was that I was a work in progress that was changing over time, and that at some point a future version of myself would find it and read it.  It turns out that my diary is peppered with references and bids to my future self and earlier past selves that ranged from funny to bittersweet to oddly prescient.  I am not a single person but a range of people along a timeline, and strange things happen when those people talk to each other.

To make your life more meaningful:
1. Go deep.
2. Write it down.
3. Back up your fucking data so you don't lose it.
4. Wait.
5. Reread.

Comments

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

i think #3 is crucial. but i preferred a paper medium, so i could also make collages, sketch, and record things in other ways. my diaries lasted from the age of 16 until... current, and they look more like a really screwed up verion of house of leaves sometimes more than anything else, with the occasional grocery list thrown in for good measure, fortune cookie collages, jewelry sketches, poetry, thought patterns, math problems, eulogies for friends, you name it. but that's how i work. i've only ever burned one, and it was something i felt i had to do at the time, and i am still glad i did it.

by the way, it made me giggle how you refer to your personal diary as "data". i mean, of course the terminology is just as accurate, it's just a completely different perspective. so much more scientific, like as if you could graph intuition with plot points. which would be amazing i think, considering how badly i would love to study psyco-neuropharmacology in regards to pheromones. i just would never have used that term myself.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Hey, if my diary had collages, I probably wouldn't call it "data" either. :-)

As for graphing intuition with plot points, I did actually record how happy I was every day and how much sleep I got, and then I made nice graphs out of it. I discovered interesting things, like the fact that not getting much sleep one night actually made me happier the next day. (I think you saw the talk I posted where I looked at all the things that were correlated with sleep)

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

i did.

what's interesting to note is that most sleep studies i've read mention exercising in the evening as a way to help induce sleep. what most sleep studies fail to mention is that so many people i've spoken to personally who happen to have sleeping problems also have other medical problems which interfere with their sleep. pain is often a factor. mental illness too. i'm not saying the mentally ill cannot exercise, but look at the medications they use to treat so many mental illnesses now:

they are anti-epileptics. or possibly, bupropion, which can induce seizures. but poking around in the neurosciences with chemicals we don't really understand yet in regards to how they work and why just because somehow they do sometimes... it's interesting. the majority opinion is often to exercise. i... want a bit more work done on that first. eternal sleep wasn't quite what i had in mind when i went to bed.

but i like where you're going with that. in a way, to me, it would be like i tried to map out my gut instincts and tear apart psychology with math and science. it's cool. i'd roll with it.

strongly agree

[(Anonymous)]

I want to second here - I also have a digital journal file from 10+ years ago, all the way to the present, and I reread entries from various time periods all the time. One of the interesting things I've noticed is that the volume of material in the journal is widely variable - some years I was prolific, while other years are missing entirely. But rereading the oldest entries is a fascinating window into the different person that I was then - sometimes the alienness of the thought patters astonishes me, and then I wonder how my current writing will look in 10 more years... at any rate, there is nothing quite like an old journal entry to settle a debate in your mind about how you really felt about an event when it happened, as opposed to your massively re-interpreted memory of it now. The gaps in the journal are the most frustrating thing: motivation to write more!

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I also strongly agree. Diaries are awesome, I wish I could say that I've kept more of one. I used to write every now and then in a personal journal, and for a long time I kept a personal video journal which was really nice (and I love going back and watching those entries). But then once I really got into livejournal I think it took the place of that. Those are nice to read for much of the same reasons, but I admit there is something missing when you aren't 100% writing for yourself.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I wish to hell I could manage to get back in the habit myself. My journal-keeping trailed off when I started working full time, and now that I might have the brain cells to try again, I feel oddly self-conscious about it.