Some Thoughts on a Thousand Days of Journal Writing

It's a milestone
with more milestones to hit in the future.

To be clear, it’s not that I started my journal one thousand days ago. I started my journal 15,960 days ago,[1] during which time (by one means or another), I have written 6,301 entries covering 4,607 days, which means the lifetime average for my journal is 29%. It would probably go up a little if I separated out a few of the entries in which I caught up on my journal after a few days of not writing any entries. The number would be much higher if I had written more frequently,[2] and a bit smaller if I didn’t re-create an entry from time to time.[3]

I must have done
something, but what?

All that to say that I may not be the best person to be a guide to diligent journaling, something I’ve only accomplished since about July 2018.[4] On the other hand, as I look at my journal, I have nothing from July 11, 1999 and July 22, 2000. It’s worse than that. Every entry in my journal from May 11, 1998 to August 31, 2000 (843 days) is a re-creation, cobbled from photos, calendar entries, or whatever else I could get to show what I was doing on a certain day.

And yet, I’ve kept at it for the last thousand days. It was an evolving process, from missing years to that period between July 2019 and April 2019 where I missed a total of six days out of 303. Not too shabby. How did I get there?

For me, the big answer was going digital. No longer was it a question of finding pen and paper. No longer was it a problem that it was too dark to write. One of the major aspects of getting this done is that my digital journal[5] keeps track of how many consecutive day on which I’ve written a journal entry. With that kind of monitoring, you just don’t want to see that go back to zero. Writing in your journal daily can become a habit, but I can’t tell you how many days it takes to establish that habit. When Day One introduced streaks, I didn’t think it was going to be my favorite feature.

Not only can you see how many
consecutive days you've written,
you also can look back. 

Daily writing was the habit I wanted to establish. There are so many entries in my journal where I apologize to myself for missing some days, weeks, or months. (The year-long gaps start with a resolution to keep a journal, not to keep one on a regular basis.) If only that lovely blank book could have reminded me to it (apps can, of course). Besides having an app nag you about this (I could set a reminder), the other valuable thing I’ve found is having a certain mindset about my journal. What is this for? I have a few answers.

Well, that doesn't look like
a busy month.

I do value my journal as a chronicle of what I’ve done over the years. What did I do on January 23, 1982? I know, though the day (according to my entry) was pretty unmemorable.[6] How about March 23, 1982. No idea. I don’t have an entry. I wish I had, but I can’t go back in time and get myself to do better at journaling.[7]

It’s also a handy space in which to write, knowing that no one else is going to see it. I can explore narrative in it, wondering how describe things so that they’ll make sense to me later, especially when there are things that overlap. How do you write about that?

In one of the many books I have on writing, one of them says that unless you’re planning on writing a memoir keeping a journal is useless. I’m not the expert on being a financially successful writer. I still feel that writers should keep journal. First, there’s the awareness that many good writers who kept journal extensively. If it’s a bad idea, why did Christopher Isherwood turn out three volumes of published journals? It gives something to write. When you’re not up for writing a poem, a story, a novel[8], you can always get those words moving with a journal entry. You may not know what the characters are going to do next, but you might have an idea what you did last.

So you want to be a consistent journal writer? The best I can suggest is that you identify whatever obstacles there are to you getting a journal entry written and that you set aside time every day to work on your journal. This is not a “find time” sort of thing,[9] but a “make time” sort of thing. You have to make time for the things that are important or they will get squeezed out. Prioritize, find some, time, and best of luck in getting to a thousand consecutive days.

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1. Specifically, May 14, 1978.  ↩

2. There is a lost volume, but the last time I saw it, it noted in my journal that it had only three entries in it.  ↩

3. As in “while composing this entry,” which means some of the numbers are already out of date.  ↩

4. Yes, July 2018 is more than one thousand days before this post was written. In 2018, I finally managed the trick of missing no more than a single day in a month. My entries are pretty regular from 2014 onward.  ↩

5. I have been using Day One for more than a decade.  ↩

6. January 23 has been memorable in some years, but 1982 was not one of them.  ↩

7. If they invent time travel, I have a list ready of advice for younger me, some of which is “don’t have sex with that guy or that guy either,” but also “please write in your journal daily.”  ↩

8. Should I add “blog post”? Yeah, let’s add blog post.  ↩

9. Time is never found.  ↩