Evernote

A few months ago, I went DIGITAL with my journal-writing. It was a tricky decision to make because my inner historian-self screams “use paper! write in your own handwriting!” But for the past year I had been struggling to write down everything I want to say in my paper-pen journal.

The reason? I type SO MUCH FASTER than I write, and I have so many things I want to ramble about and so little time to ramble with. Plus, handwriting is messy and it’s hard to go back to change a sentence after its written. Admittedly, all of those imperfections do give a paper journal personality that a typed document lacks. But they were also causing me to write less and less details in my journal. I was turning to the blog more and more so I could type long stories and thoughts with ease and have them saved neatly in an organized time line. With pictures.

The line between journal and blog was getting fuzzy. It was hard to keep my blog-writing impersonal enough for the masses but personal enough to preserve my actual memories. It’s not like I write deep dark secrets in a locked diary or anything, but I do have some private thoughts that are, well, private!  I want to be real on the blog, but I don't want to discuss every single thing in such a public place.

For months, I hemmed and hawed over typing instead of writing. It was a big decision! I love to write my thoughts. Dumbledore had his Pensive, I have my journal. I write my thoughts almost every day, so choosing where to put them was tough. There are so many things I love about "real" journals that I was nervous a typed journal would not have. For one thing, I don't like relying on technology to create and save everything I write--what if it got damaged, deleted, corrupted, or just lost? The horror! But the same thing goes for my old journals--they can probably get damaged or lost even more easily than the electronic versions because there is only ONE combustible copy of each paper journal--no backups.

But then again, I love snuggling into my chair with blanket at the end of the day with my pen and journal in the warm glow of a lamp, not sitting at the cold hard dark desk to type an entry. I love the chubby, useful look and feel of a fat 200-page journal filled with my own writing and drawings, with random papers stuck in throughout. I love the look of the eclectic mix of sizes and styles of filled journals I have in the box under my bed. I also rather enjoy shopping for a new journal--so many choices! Round and round my internal circumlocutions swirled.

Finally I brought the dilemma to my technological husband. Jeff instantly introduced me to Evernote. It’s a free journal-note-writing app that you can get on any internet device—from smartphone to computer. And the app syncs everything you write across all devices! So I can type something on the computer and then read it on the ipad five seconds later. Boom. AND we just discovered that Evernote lets you export files and save them onto the computer for backup. Sha-pow. And you don't even need the internet to use the app (only for syncing). Awesome! I'm converted. I've been using Evernote for almost 3 months now, and the quality (and quantity) of my journal entries has increased dramatically.

That brings me to my last point: Evernote is sapping posts from the blog! Since I type my journal now, I can also easily type up other little thoughts and ideas and store them safely away before deciding whether they are worth posting. Since I'm my own worst critic, less of those little compositions make it into an actual blog post, resulting in half the posts of the pre-Evernote days. So that’s the story, morning glory.

In other news, Rose has started doing her bunny’s “hair” and accessorizing accordingly.