OhLife, Where art thou?

In my previous post, I mentioned journaling for fifteen minutes every day. Readers commented on that aspect particularly, saying they appreciated it. Being the magnanimous soul that I am, I would like to give credit where it is due, and a lot of the credit goes to a site called OhLife. 

In the days of yore, i.e. a few months ago, I penned nightly entries into an old-fashioned 2010 diary using an equally o-f pen.

This worked, but with two exceptions:

• I had to write in my journal only after the baby slept, else she’d scream and demand my pen and diary to scribble in. I have donated most of my old notebooks to her as it is, but a collection of doodles is not something I’m looking to build in my diary.
• At the fag end of the day, I simply didn’t have the energy required to write my thoughts and daily activities, that too minutes before dozing off to sleep.

So when I stumbled across funnyman Narendra Shenoy’s blogpost touting this new site, I was intrigued. I clicked through, read their modus operandi and instantly signed up.

I’ve been using it for a month now and cannot recommend it enough. It works like this:

1. You sign up for it, set your timezone correctly.
2. You will start to receive a daily email asking ‘How did your day go?’
3. Reply to the email with your entry for the day.
4. Tada! Its done! And it’s all totally private, meant for your eyes only!

It addresses two major issues I’ve often thought of before while writing with old-fashioned quill and parchment:

• What if I want to see what I did last year/month/week around this time?
• What if I simply forget to note down things for one day?
• How will I write my journal without baby stealing my pen and paper?

Every day when I get the reminder I also get a ‘Last week you wrote…’ followed by my entry that day. It’s been great fun to see what I was up to that day one week or month ago.

Epiphany

The other major realization that hits me is: I’ve completed almost 10,000 words of journaling since I signed up, which I think is huge! If I applied at least this much effort to my next novel I could churn it out in six months or so.

I’d urge everyone who has maintained a journal before to try it at least once. I have been using it religiously since I signed up, and have grown quite fond of it. 

Do you journal? What’s your favourite tool for journaling?