By Sheldon Greaves

Nobody who is even slightly paying attention will deny that we are living in extraordinary times. Everywhere you look there are sudden and drastic changes, many of them inconvenient, and several potentially deadly. These are times that people in the future will look back to for lessons about their own challenges, to learn what we did right, and where we were mistaken. What will you remember from these events? If ever there was a time for starting a journal to record your own small part in all this, it is now.

One of our family’s prized documents is a journal kept by my paternal grandfather, Harry George Greaves, who came to America as a young Greek immigrant, fought for his adopted country as part of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, married and raised a family while working as a carpenter and master builder. Written by hand originally, it was transcribed by his wife, Sarah, and the typescript photocopied and distributed to his descendants. Grandpa Harry’s account is a rough, unpolished gem; his imperfect immigrant’s English takes nothing away from the immediacy of his story. If it weren’t for this account, I would know far less about this remarkable man.

Journals Are All the Rage

Keeping a journal is a popular activity. There are “bullet journals” to keep you organized, which can also convey information about your personal history, travel journals, nature journals, and the classic standby in which you simply let your thoughts spill across the page. Another example is a revival of the “commonplace book“, which is a repository for interesting ideas you run across in your reading and browsing. It is a popular, centuries-old practice among authors and scholars who want grist for their own work.

There is also a welcome trend away from journaling on a computer and going back to good old fashioned pen and paper. This is a good thing. For one thing, a journal written on quality paper will last for centuries. Your computer files? Not likely.

Writing things in longhand takes effort, so you have an incentive to pack as much detail into as few words as possible. There is no better way to improve one’s writing than by writing, frequently, the old-fashioned way. Another interesting trend is the rise of interest in sketching while traveling or out in nature. This takes a bit longer and more practice to learn, but when done even nominally well, the results are pleasing.

Why Bother?

There are some definite benefits to keeping a journal. We could all use more time to think, reflect, play with ideas, and do so in the unique privacy to be found on the pages of a blank book. It can boost your creativity. It is a place to vent, to dream, to ask the hard or even unanswerable questions. Journals are a great way to manage stress. Writing is a great way to get a handle on your own thinking, to order your thoughts, set goals, or plan for the future. You don’t need to make it a history of your world, but how you reacted to things that happen to you can be a great source of insight later on.

One of my personal favorite reasons for keeping a journal is to keep myself honest. People change their minds and shift their attitudes about many things as we go through life, but it is very common for people to assume that what they believe now is what they have always believed. A journal will show you how your mind has changed and sometimes explain what changed it. This is a powerful tool for self-reflection, and an indirect affirmation that we can change our minds, and often that’s a good thing.

I’ve been keeping a more or less regular journal since the late 90’s–well in excess of ten thousand hand-written pages. For me it is both a personal history and a tool for scholarship. Every now and then I go back through the notebooks and read. If I find something really interesting, something that could form the basis for an article, essay, or other project, or simply an idea that still seems fresh, I transcribe it to a 3×5 index card. That goes into a file for future work.

Getting Started

Find yourself a notebook that will work for you. If you’re worried about messing up a nice blank book, start with a composition book from the dollar store. If you hate how it turns out, your out some time and one buck. But a blank book with heavy, smooth paper can be a joy to write on, especially if you have a decent pen. Roller ball pens are pretty good. A fountain pen is better. A good fountain pen in working order just floats over the page; I can write with mine literally for hours without my hand getting tired. Your handwriting will improve. You’ll come to enjoy the lively line that a good pen creates. Fountain pens are available from a number of different vendors on the web. Mine cost me about fifteen dollars and has been working well for about four years now.

What to Write?

Few things are more intimidating than a pen poised over a blank page. Start with something. Anything. What you ate for breakfast. The weather. News of the day, and what you thought about it. Write your hopes, fears, hatreds, and loves. Keep it to yourself. When you read something or see something that interests you, write your reaction to it. Put a bit of thought into it. Good writing is a direct result of clear thinking, and is one of the best ways to train your mind.

Include detail, fresh detail. Write so that when you come back to it, you will still see the sights, hear the sounds, smell the smells, or recall your feelings of the time.

If you use these extraordinary times as a reason to acquire the habit of the daily journal, you will also discover something else: as you condense your life onto its pages you will discover the profound truth that all the times in our lives are extraordinary.