Hi! I just stumbled across this community. I've been journaling about 6 years now I think. I started because I was worried about my memory and thought practicing remembering what I did that day might help, as well as having something to refer back to. So I just started writing down what I had done that day. Initially a few bullet points, then that grew. I write something every day but the only rule is I have to write something, I don't require a certain number of words or to cover anything in particular.

I don't think it's helped my memory (In the end I'm pretty sure I just have ADHD, with plenty of memories but no control over retrieving them). I kept it up anyway, and often refer back to them to see what I was doing on certain days (like the time a speeding ticket arrived in the mail and neither my wife nor I could remember going anywhere near where the camera was - in the end it turned out my mother in law had borrowed the car that day).

When I was starting I put some thought into the medium and decided for searchability I wanted it to be digital, and for longevity I went with plain text files. I have a folder for each year, then name them with the date such as 2025-01-13.txt for today. I feel these are going to be really important to me when I'm older, as important as photos, so I have them stored across a number of free cloud storage providers, that I update every few months (every day to one, the rest in bulk).

I'm not sure what I'm hoping to get out of the community, but I've subscribed anyway and we will see how it goes 🙂

I'm from France, Paris. Yes, depending where you’re looking it’s a real nice city but, no, I do not have a direct sight over the Eiffel tower. That said, my spouse and I can enjoy breakfast with fresh handmade croissants by our nearby baker right on our balcony, when the weather is cooperating (which means not for the time being ;)

I'm a dude, well into my 50s. Beside the few early years, I've always worked from home. I've been journaling since I was a 7 year-old, both as a way to escape my childhood that was not the most peaceful, and as a way to understand better what was happening to and around me. Decades later, I still journal mostly to keep a short record of my day (nothing newsworthy in my journal, sorry historians) and as a way to put some order in my thoughts too. Something I have always considered journaling was incredibly useful for.

I have been journaling analog (pen, paper, notebook, typewriter, cassettes, I even tried video tapes, and so on) and digital (Word files, Markdown, and journaling apps like DayOne). I'm now fully committed to analog (pen and paper). I also sketch (poorly) in my journal (ink and watercolors).

I'm a lifelong fountain pen user, I'm old enough that we were taught writing using a fountain pen, back in school. But I'm not obsessed with it either and will happily use whatever is at hand’s reach.

If you’re wondering why I use two different accounts, one with the blue icon and the other with a red one, it’s just that I wanted to avoid interference between my administrative role and my role as a member of the community. I post with the red icon, as a member without any privilege, while the blue guy, with all the power, is only there to admin the community. He doesn’t post content beside whatever is related to the life of the community itself (like this very post), he doesn’t comment and he doesn’t vote either. He is not allowed to, that is unless I mix the two accounts which happened once already but since then I’ve tried to be more careful. Edit: Well, it looks like I managed to get it wrong once more :p

oups, wrong account :p