This morning, I started both a new volume of my journal and a new pocket notebook. I generally try not to think much about such transitions, but having both work out to occur on the same day made me pause for a moment. It’s like when the out-of-sync windshield wipers on the bust periodically fall into harmony for a moment.
After journalling on and off over the years, I started keeping a (mostly) daily written journal in 2016. Two years later, I bought a packet of pocket notebooks and began using those as well. I now have pretty big stacks of both
Over the years, these habits have dramatically cut down on my interest in tweeting or blogging. I think that is generally a good thing. Most thoughts are better written down for oneself than posted publicly on the web, and I find the advice that we all ought to be showing our work to be misguided. I am not sure anyone is well-served by the proliferation of half-formed thoughts and knee-jerk responses that has flowed from this type of advice, and it is hard to think of anything more harmful to one’s inner mental life than exposing it to the acid bath of the public internet.