16-Jan-2024
Back to Home Back to GeneralHere is the first entry in my electronic journal, dated 2023-10-07.
Today is the first time I have tried journalling using a computer. There's something about it feeling less real and more synthetic than hand writing. That it doesn't flow like ink from a pen. That it is slower, perhaps, or that the computer is filled with distractions which are never and will never be contained by a blank page in a notebook. To journal on a computer feels necessarily more constrained, things are binary, binned, a digitised version of the analog world in which we live.
Yet, there is something freeing about that fact it does not have a physical presence. It exists only in the aether. We tend to think of digitised objects as ephemeral or of having some impermanence, possibly due to the 'newness' of the medium, but in reality they can be a permanent record. Protected from real-world damage, fire, water, rotting in the earth, if you store it in the clouds. But of course, cloud storage is warehouse upon warehouse of servers, and the only protection from real-world damage is the economy of scale and safety in numbers you get from outsourcing your responsibility to keep your files safe. Can you trust the people you give your data to?
Store it locally, then. Multiple copies, distributed between your children when you die, or, less morbidly, as a backup for when one of the copies gets lost. Infinite space in a tiny storage box, for a journal that lasts a lifetime. Who will read it? Who will want it? Questions for later.
This journal is written to digest the day, as a memory store, as a place to explore topics, thoughts and emotions. At 27, my memory seems to be failing me. I experience the world, but often I can't consciously recall my experiences. I was recently asked 'When was the first time you got drunk?'. I didn't know. I still can't recall. Through this journal, I hope to create some calm and process my memories in a new way, in a way that helps the filing system in my own brain retain the significant and insignificant events in my life. To reflect and honour the day. To record stories to tell when I am old, when I get married, joyous and sad occasions relating to others for which stories would be a heartwarming anecdote or a balm to soothe.
This journal is written to honour the power of stories.