Keeping a 10 Year Journal

My most valuable possession; I'd run into a burning building to save this!

On my 6th year of daily journaling

Today marks a special day in the year for me; the day I decided to start keeping a daily journal. On June 10th, 2006, I was given the journal above as a graduation gift from my parents. I've been writing in it every day since then and have a record of everything I've done for the last 5 years. I can't tell you how much of a joy it is to make new entries and look back over what's been done in the last 5 years.


I decided to blog about this, because since starting it I've known others who have done the same and found a similar joy in daily journaling! Adventurous people always tend to keep journals and its a great daily hobby.

Lets get one thing straight right of the bat- this ain't an emotional journal. Other than a few exclamation points, my journal is about as emotional as a police report. I simply record activities and accomplishments which vary from year to year.

My well-worn, well-traveled, well-filled journal

I like this type of journal because its a simpler way of journaling. Basically, you have 366 pages for each date in a year. For each page, you have 10 years of the dates from top to bottom. So for say, the date August 21st, you would have a list of August 21st, 2011, 2012, 2013 ect. For each date, you just write a couple of sentences or bullet points about what you did that day. Sometimes this ends up being rather mundane- Finished up a work project, went for a bike ride, studied for finals, ect. However you also can record big events where you wouldn't normally remember the date i.e. First day at new job!, Drove across country! Ran first 5k!, Epic night in Vegas! and things such as that.

Just write 4 sentences every day

After you do it for a while, it become like a "time capsule" of your life and you can remember both the remarkable and normal events that have happened over the years. Even the somewhat "boring" events become somewhat memorable when you look back over 4 or 5 years. Its interested to see how your daily life changes over time.

What's perhaps the most interesting and nostalgic aspect of this type of journaling is when I happen to record non-events that ended up becoming hugely significant. For example, I happened to record the very day I met my would-be-girlfriend of the last 4 years. It wasn't a glamorous event- just happened to run into each other at a social function at the local pizza joint. 5 years later, that even is a lot more significant! I also recorded the day I looked at a job in Maine in 2010. It was before I graduated UCI. This led to an eventual job in Sebago which, a year later, ended up being part of the reason why I did graduate school here!

You just never know when the little things become major events!

So this is a really good way to keep track of changes in life for people who don't have time to write long entries every day. For me, its become a daily joy and something that's become my most valuable possession.

Next blog, back to more adventures!

(oh here's the website for the 10-year journal)