format of your journal: keep it digital

HOW SHOULD YOU FORMAT YOUR JOURNAL?

How should you format your journal? Or, how should you keep your journal?

ANSWER

I highly recommend making the switch form pen and paper to keeping it on the internet (i.e. email, Google Docs, Cloud, etc.). In other words, keep a digital email.

Now, for those of you who just cringed or said, "No way," please keep reading. 

For those of you who like that idea, you can keep reading or jump ahead to the section of: KEEPING YOUR JOURNAL ON THE INTERNET.

WHY ON EARTH WOULD I WANT TO DO THAT?

You may ask that question after I encouraged you to keep a digital journal or one on the internet. You may be extremely opposed to any such venture, as a matter of fact. However, let me tell you why you should.

If you have never done a Bible study workbook, and/or have never journaled, this might seem foreign to you regarding the answer I am about to give you. Hang with me, though.

Why should you keep a digital journal? The simple answer is 4-fold: 

~ It saves money.

~ It saves space.

~ It is permanent. 

~ You can carry it with you at all times--24/7/365. 

IT SAVES MONEY

It saves money to save your journals online (on the internet). After all, you do not have to buy  paper (i.e. blank journals or looseleaf), pens, and storage.

IT SAVES SHELF SPACE AND BROKEN BACKS AND SHOULDERS

This is where for those of you who have never written down prayers, done journaling, and have never done a Bible study where you have a workbook need to trust me.

In time, this blog will help you to move from never keeping a journal to keeping a sentence to keeping a paragraph to keeping a page to keeping 2 pages or more daily. (Trust me. you will. It is a progression which we will help you move through without even realizing it. So, you still start off simple, in small chunks, and with minimal time to maximal time and having a loyal faith in God and in his Word.

If you keep a journal of paper and pen, it costs money. It means making sure you always have an extra journal around in case you run out of room if you don't. It means you would have to carry all of them with you at all times when you go back and evaluate, re-evaluate, and review. That gets heavy.

Also, journals start to pile up and that requires space. Imagine keeping ten years worth of journals or more. Those take even more space.

Ideally, this blog will help you want to develop, and keep, a loyal faith and that means a lifelong commitment. Part of a loyal faith is thinking things through, planning, evaluating, keeping track, re-evaluating, reviewing, and so on. This all requires space and money.

If you are 90 years old, I understand not caring about that. However, if you are less than 90, you might really think about this.

I've journaled for 26 years and have hundreds of paper and pen journals. They take up a great deal of space, needless to say. And, what is the reality I will get all fo them digitized and put on the computer? I hope to, but will I ever get all of the typed up? It is doubtful. Do you want to deal with that? Let me answer for you. I don't think so.

Trust me.

IT SAVES ROOM ON YOUR COMPUTER

If you save your journals onto your computer, they, too, will eat storage in your computer. If you save them on USB memory sticks or other storage devices, they take up memory as well. That costs money and you can still loose your journals. Hence, I recommend saving everything over the internet. Email is one option I highly recommend. The way I most recommend is through Google Documents.

Memory storage/space is UNLIMITED. Also, you can get to your journals from any computer or cell phone with internet capability.

So, how do you do this?

I will do a future blog post on JOURNALING WITH GOOGLE DOCS. (It will be sometime in the next couple of days.)

For now, send yourself email of your journal entries, if you are not familiar with Google Docs.

Why do I recommend Google Docs?:

~ Unlimited Storage Space

~ You can email the file to yourself as well.

~ You can get to it from any computer or cell phone with internet capability.

~ It is FREE. No charge.

~ It's easy. 

~ It has an excellent search feature for when you try to look up journal entries at a later date. 

IT IS PERMANENT

If you have the paper and pen variety, a problem arises. I know this firsthand and get emotional just thinking about it.

Hurricanes and fires happen.

I am a Colorado native. Hurricanes were never a problem for me. Then, a few months ago, my husband and I moved to Virginia. We had a mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Irene in late August 2011. Do you see the problem? We have a mid-sized SUV--a beagle, an orange tabby, and two aquatic turtles. We have photographs (2 plastic containers worth). We needed clothes and food.

Do you see the problem?

I have three extra large plastic containers (i.e. Rubbermaid/ Sterilite about four feet by three feet in size each) of journals--packed to the brim. We did NOT have enough room in the car to bring them with us. That meant leaving them behind. (Yikes.)

Paper and pen journals are not permanent.

Also, when we moved here, the movers lost one extra large plastic container of them. They never found them.

I've also had well-meaning movers mix up loose-leaf pages when moving--over 5,000 pages of them. That also happened with this move.

Also, water spills. I've spilled glasses of water on my journals--when I've been on the last pages of my paper and pen journals. (Urgh!)

So, trust me.

You do NOT want to lose them (or have them put out of order) or have them destroyed. There is a lot of loss and grief which happens if you ever lose them. Consequently, make your journals permanent--where fire, hurricane, and movers cannot destroy them. They are too precious and valuable.

Your journals are permanent if you keep them online, over the internet, and in any one of the ways mentioned below.

PAPER AND PEN JOURNAL YELLOW AND INK FADES

Over time, paper and pen journals turn yellow and the ink fades. Some of mine have. Therefore, keep a digital journal and one over the internet. It never fades or yellows. 

YOU CAN CARRY IT WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES--24/7/365

It is absolutely necessary to keep a journal with you at all times. After all, if God tells you something, you want to remember it--not just for the short-term, but for the long-term as well. The problem with carrying a paper and pen journal means you have to carry them with you. Then, when you get to the point that you are almost done with one journal, you will need to have the second one with you as well so you don't have to stop journaling because you run out of space. This means it can get bulky.

It is highly valuable in your life of developing and keeping a loyal faith to review and re-evaluate your experiences and journey.

Also, as you go, you may want to find something you wrote in the past for whatever reason. 

KEEPING YOUR JOURNAL ON THE INTERNET

See the section above which says "IT SAVES SHELF SPACE."