On Journaling

I wrote this a week ago.

My last journal was over a week ago, last Saturday.

I’ve had a week off work with a really bad cough, wheezing, shortness of breath. Generally feeling better these last couple of days, but also still coughing. Last two days I had coughing fits in the afternoons leaving me dizzy, and exhausted. I haven’t slept well some nights either, due to coughing, wheezing and breathlessness.

But sitting here right now, I feel as good as I have done in two weeks or more.

Time off from work has allowed me to go through 90 days of journal entries to categorise and summarise them, and then outline or tease out the key themes or ideas in each area of interest. Why? Well, 1) what are all these journal entries for? I mean, I get the process, but am I missing out on something greater? 2) Lots of people publish weekly summaries and some people like reading them. But why?

I think I get it now. Doing this work has made sense of a lot of daily, weekly and monthly events, habits, routines, scenarios, relationships, that otherwise would have remained loosely connected, strung together like the Christmas lights every year when you take them out of the box you left them in in January. In a mess, tangled up, half working. Better than nothing, but a lot of stress.

And another surprising fact. While I started - and soon stopped - journaling in March, then restarted in August, I had wondered if spending the time to write in a private journal would take away from writing for my blog? Actually (and unsurprisingly, really) the opposite has occurred. I have written more than ever, privately and publicly.

I’ve also generally felt better in myself, although I’ve still had my usual ups and downs, and I’m still quite easily uplifted and dragged down.

It’s also made me realise I do a lot more things than I imagined, and do them OK.

It’s helped me to better understand some of my relationships, particularly with family.

I’m reading more, and listening to music more.

It would be useful (although perhaps less fun)to do the same exercise with my work journal. (41 pages, 46 days).

244 pages over 90 days for my personal journal.

Unfortunately, I haven’t journaled since.

Every time someone mentions Croissant (for cross-posting) I hear big kid’s Mum telling him, “You can’t have croissants for breakfast every morning!”

I wrote 300 pages of notes and reflections in my personal and work journals in 90 days.

Digital Leader

Hoping we found a good solution to help big kid’s Digital Leader application.

He found it difficult to focus and get his head around answering the questions in a sensible (let alone helpful) way.

Instead, I recorded him speaking about the devices and tech he uses, how he helps his little brother and his parents to play games, and how using new apps like Duolingo has helped him to learn Spanish (when previously he hated Spanish lessons).

Google automatically transcribed his speech and copied it to Google Docs. There I edited out the ums and ahs and pasted it into his Discord chat with me. Then he copied it out by hand on to the application form.

🤞

Finally figured out how to add @sod’s Search-Space and Surprise-Me plug-ins to my micro.blog.

(It requires adding the full URL as the page content.)

H/t to @Manton!

Search the people you follow on Twitter for possible Mastodon/Fediverse accounts.

I forgot the link! pruvisto.org/debirdify/

Thanks @pruvisto for such a nice tool.

Why are toasters and smoke alarms still so stupid?