Whew. Well here goes.
The past couple weeks (months, maybe?) have been quite busy. This is honestly the first time I got to sit down and really mash down my thoughts through my fingers and onto a keyboard. It was quite the norm for me to sit and hash out thoughts on concepts, reviews, commentary, etc. But due to the unpredictable nature of life, norms often get disrupted.
Having a feeble mind like mine, disrupted norms can often bring forth chaos. Its important to keep your integrity during those times — to shine your brightest during those times. It will give you motivation when the next batch of chaos comes around.
There are a couple things have helped me out during this odd time, both personally and for this site. In this post, I would like to talk about...
Journaling
Journaling is for wimps.
That's what I use to think. I always saw "journal" as the masculine form of "diary". Only pre-teen girls kept diaries2.
Yet, through a lot of the sites that I read, claims are abundant how some of the greatest and most insightful humans around documented their lives in these "journals" — even men.
As a man who enjoys a rare / medium-rare porterhouse, I could not possibly believe that. But I gave it a shot. I downloaded Day One on both the Mac and iOS.
Didn't like it.
Maybe I should get in touch with my analog roots and write in a super-fancy Italian notebook. That'll bring the Hemingway out of me.
Didn't like it.
Maybe I was doing it wrong. Yet when this odd part of my life came around and all I kept doing during my commutes was converse with my inner thoughts, I thought:
"Man, I should be writing this in a journal. This is some good shit."
So I gave it a stab again. Meh, better — but still a little out-of-place for me.
Then came the Day One 1.7 update for both Mac and iOS that included image posts along with weather/geolocation data. I thought it was rather gimmicky. But I gave it a shot anyways.
Man...
I don't know what it was. But just like in the movie "The Sandlot", the scene where Benny said a few words to Smalls on how to catch and throw a baseball. One successful exchange later, Smalls now has enough on-the-field experience and quick thinking to hit a cut-off man.
I'm Smalls.
As soon as I snapped a picture of my daughter, words just began flowing into my "journal". I started piping what I would've tweeted into Day One, but that quickly evolved into entries consisting of 500-1000 words. Who knew writing my thoughts, ideas, outlooks, and emotions would be so amazing? Amazingly personal. I could even be compared to that girl from Fifty Shades of Grey who went from complete novice to über-pro1.
Of course there are the well-known features that were instrumental in hooking me to the app:
- Markdown
- Fixed-Width Font (Anonymous Pro)
- Dropbox Sync (or iCloud for you poets out there)
- Scheduled Backups (My new tech-fetish)
- iOS and OS X support
- Glowing orb-like passcode-masking light thingies
Does Day One have what it takes to keep this once-shallow, now enlightened, man practicing this fabled art? Who knows? But if this app can't, I doubt anything will.
While I assume most of you smart readers have gone out and purchased it (while laughing at my late epiphanies), if you haven't and are on the fence about journaling, give Day One for iOS and OS X3 a shot.