What is this WT?
We’ve a steadily growing community—Welcome to our 18 new members since last week, we’re now 483 total!—but participation is growing slower.
My idea is to encourage people in participating more by pushing a weekly theme. It’s an invitation, not a mandatory theme. Feel free to comment about anything else related to journaling, or to start your own thread ;)
This week theme: If by journaling it you could change one thing in the past…
News aren’t that great and I thought it might be an interesting way to reuse a classic sifi theme. So, if by journaling it, writing it or skecthing it down in your journal, you could change any past event, not something global like an election, a war, some castatrophic event, or anything like that but something directly linked to you daily or to the people close to you.
- Would you use that power?
- What would you change?
New sub here after seeing it on fedigrow.
I do interstitial journaling as part of my PKM.
To answer the questions:
Would I? Even tough my mind feels a resolute “nope!”, I would say yes, such power would just be too much to not use. (Or try). I would put small experiments first to see what can, and what the consequences are of changing the past.
What would I change? I would try to alter small events that caused me great grief later on but not the big things. I feel those have made me who I am, good or bad.
What I’d rather try to do is change the timeline to skip certain parts, like fast-forwarding in a movie. Go from my ex-gf to my now wife (without the rebounds and akward flirtings).
Change which friends I would meet sooner, so I’d have more time with them. Knowing friends come and go, the ones who stay… I wish I could add years to those friendships.
Also change little habits that would improve my health down the line so I can live longer.
And maybe I would try to change my career, so I could have started where I am now but younger so I didn’t burn-out on an ex-job. I do feel the burn-out forged me, so I might leave that in.
Tl; dr i’d change nothing big, just adjust the timeline and leave out everything that didn’t change or add value to me as a person. (In a way I would Marie Kondo my past but keeling everything that made me feel, and dropping everything I’m indifferent for.)
Great! And welcome. I like to read and keep others updated in the fedigrow community, it’s great to see the fediverse trying to get better (and it’s cool to see people joining from there :)
I had to check that one. Would you agree to say it is kind of similar to the simple quick notes I take in no order in my pocket notebook (and later put back either as index cards in my zettelkasten, or in my journal in a more structured/linear fashion)?
Very similar to my own choice I would say. I will post about it later on.
Thanks for the warm welcome.
Well pretty much, but I used to try and journal (like write down how the day went and how I felt) but after a few weeks I would just skip it, which meant my journal was starting to become a empty notebook dotted with filled in half pages. I then tought to work the same as you, write down quick notes and add them up but found the workload too much to start.
When I found out about interstitial journaling, it pretty much fit in with my way of thinking and the fact I can add tasks and to-do’s between it all makes for a very compelling journalling.
I use capacities.io right now, and it also allows for some easy markdown syntax so it usually looks a bit like:
08:00 - Woke up feeling rested, but not fully refreshed. Today is a big day at work and I have to get ready [ ] Prepare the desk for the new hire [ ] Take out the trash when coming home 10:12 - Met the new hire, he seems very hopefull and I hope I made a good first impression as I will be supervising him. I think I’m going to go for a lunch and … 22:00 - in bed, I should be sleeping but today is keeping me up. Overthinking again. [ ] Do more breathing exercises (for the next day)
So whenever I have a break or think about it, I just @now - write down what I think, did, will do and I can add [ ] checkboxes for to-do’s. Whenever I complete it I check it off, or at the end of the day I do a big review and check it all of. Often during slow moments I spend time cleaning up or adding more to previous days to beter convey what I meant at the moment. I find it helps me a lot to include everything, ups, downs, things I like, things I don’t like.
I also have a whatsapp bot set up with it so I can just send quick whatsapp chats to add to my journaling and clean it up later.
The reason it works for me is I think because I always have a running tasklist in my head, and every time I check my tasks means I have a break, thus time to journal. While if I actively think about journaling, in which I sometimes can get very lost, seeing my tasks reminds me of the things on hand.
It’s like a combo-deal and makes me feel more efficient, beter organized and I forget a lot less because it’s been written and reviewed multiple times.