Journals

[Anonymous No.19229208]

Do you keep a journal anon? What kind of stuff do you usually write in it?

[Anonymous No.19229217]

>>19229208
Some notes/thoughts on whatever I read that day
Maybe when I’m an esteemed academic I’ll publish it

[Anonymous No.19229223]

>>19229208
every page is the continuation of a long standing record of my romantic and social failures

[Anonymous No.19229225]

My fucked-up sexual fantasies.

[Anonymous No.19229234]

>>19229217
>>19229223
>>19229225
All of these things. Dreams, as well. I've been keeping mine for six years and I'm wondering whether to switch to digital so that I can write more and faster.

[Anonymous No.19229235]

>>19229208
I write anything and everything. Whatever crazy, ridiculous, makes no sense, overthinking thought that goes through my head. I just write it all down to get it all out. It helps calm the chaos.

[Anonymous No.19229236]

>>19229208
One time I wrote in a journal a confession of love for a coworker who was engaged to be married. I felt so ashamed after writing it down. I didn't continue the journal. It was the first and only entry. I had a deathly fear somehow they or someone would read the entry, even it was never a possibility of them stepping foot in my apartment. I still feel deep shame about that confession of lust I wrote down.

[Anonymous No.19229238]

>>19229208
book quotations

[Anonymous No.19229241]

I have one but I write in it very sporadically, maybe once every few months. Occasionally I make the mistake of re-reading old entries and realize I'm a fucking psycho because all I ever do is vent my anger.

[Anonymous No.19229262]

>>19229241
this reads similarly to my habits with my journal

[Anonymous No.19229624]

I tried for a while but it's been sitting in my drawer for 4 years. To gaze upon the absolute catastrophe that my life has been would break me. I need to get round to burning it but I'm afraid if I touch I'll start to open it.

[Anonymous No.19229692]

>>19229236
This is why I don't write a journal either. Too afraid of others reading. Only God should judge my thoughts.

[Anonymous No.19229780]

>>19229236
Yeah, can't get over the fear, too. Got even harder, when my ex girlfriend saw it and asked if she can read it.

[Anonymous No.19229846]

>>19229208
I do. I vent. It slows your thoughts to write instead of think or talk makes you analyze yourself or brake and calm down

[Anonymous No.19229869]

>>19229692
Do you have this fear because you live with others/have people visit very regularly?
>>19229236
I understand the guilt and fear, but the fear of that happening feels irritational.

[Anonymous No.19229903]

>>19229208
Only when I'm institutionalized

[Anonymous No.19229908]

w/e comes to mind. It isnt pretty, but it's better on paper than in my head. It's borderline schizo.

[Anonymous No.19229961]

>>19229208
nightmares, since i often convert these into stories, and other sinister thoughts.
i only started journaling after therapy failed several years ago, and while it certainly helps as an emotional release, i think the true catharsis comes from eventually destroying them.

[Anonymous No.19229994]

yep.
stuff.
few thousand pages by now i guess.

[Anonymous No.19230018]

>>19229869
Yeah I live with others. Though I tend to talk to myself rather than write things down.

[Anonymous No.19230040]

>>19230018
Makes total sense anon. I keep a journal myself but I am not to active with it. I hide it in one of those fake books in my bookshelf so no one bothers grabbing it. I actually bought a moleskin today, but I intend on it to be for story ideas since I didn'tlike it cluttering my other journal I guess. My other journal—which is basically a diary if I'm going to be honest—is still going to be for everything else.

[Anonymous No.19230054]

>>19229225
do you want to be caught?

[Anonymous No.19230066]

To those of you who do keep journals, post a page from it. Or just random handwriting, that is cool too.

[Anonymous No.19230099]

>>19230066
does /lit/ like my little cockroach?

[Anonymous No.19230116]

>>19230066
From my journal (I don't use a pen because my handwriting is unintelligible even to me)
Note Two, or, On Nulliparity as Justified by Occupational Desire:

Think, now, how many times you've heard the following from a well-off Western woman: "I wish not to have children, for I wish more strongly to have a career." Now think of how disgusting such a statement truly is. To forego creating life in favor of creating profits for the capitalist overlords. To forego the miracle of childbirth for the "miracle" of 9-to-5 wage-slavery and rush-hour traffic. To trade the prospect of making manifest in flesh your endless love for another human being, to trade the prospect of creating the strongest and deepest and most rewarding bond possible—the bond of family—for IOU slips that can't even be exchanged for gold anymore, slips that are literally worthless. No one wants this truly and emphatically unless they are insane. Now, consider the character of Daniel Plainview. Even Mr. Plainview, a man who held strong manifest desires for total domination, held strong (perhaps stronger) latent desires for the bond of family. If Mr. Plainview himself wants a family, you know for certain some doughy and coddled Western woman with no competition in her whatsoever wants one as well. To the nulliparous career woman, I ask you this: Who are you kidding? There is no competition in you whatsoever! None at all! Do you truly think you want money more than you want kids? Do you mean to tell me you're more of a megalomaniac than Daniel Plainview? That your desire for victory is so much more all-encompassing that you wouldn't even cry "I've abandoned my child!" after a visit with the abortionist?

[Anonymous No.19230120]

>>19230099
yeah that thing's sweet

[Anonymous No.19230122]

[Anonymous No.19230137]

I keep an extensive reading journal. What I write in it depends mostly on what I'm getting out of the book I'm reading. Sometimes it is trying to work out what the author is trying to do, sometimes it is figuring out what I like or don't like about it, sometimes it is just a plot summary because I can't think of anything better to write. I also have many books full of notes I take while reading. I don't often read through them, but I find the act of stopping to write something down increases comprehension significantly so I do it. I've tried many times to keep a personal journal but it never really stays consistent, I prefer to have that kind of conversation in my head (which my future self inevitably regrets, because it feels like losing a part of yourself when you don't leave a trace of yourself as you were at a certain time)

[Anonymous No.19230143]

one more.

[Anonymous No.19230149]

>>19230143
You met Destiny too? Fucking sweet.

[Anonymous No.19230226]

>>19229208
>Do you keep a journal anon?
before it was cool

[Anonymous No.19230232]

>>19230226
Journal writing has been cool for at least three centuries, anon

[Anonymous No.19230236]

>>19229236
Wow. I’ve never given enough of a shit about someone to feel like that.
I don’t think I’ve had a desire for someone since I was in high school.
Why am I even alive?

[Anonymous No.19230239]

I write in a diary from time to time. Usually its about what happened or some ramblings and insights.

[Anonymous No.19230244]

>>19229208
I just live my life like normal until the schizo kettle starts screaming, then I enter a trancelike state and fill out 1-4 pages of megalomaniac rambling until I feel exhausted. Then I go for a walk. Repeat in 3 days once the pressure to express myself builds again

[Anonymous No.19230245]

I'm a list writer and nothing more. List of books, movies, topics, etc. that I find interesting.

[Anonymous No.19230247]

>>19229208
No, but I read them.
You guys should post them for me, diaries are currently the thing i'm in to.

[Anonymous No.19230312]

>>19230244
i like your journal

[Anonymous No.19230336]

[Anonymous No.19230340]

>>19230336
stop thinking about jessica

[Anonymous No.19230342]

>>19230336
have a wank and get a hobby

[Anonymous No.19230343]

>>19230312
Thanks. It's literally a resume pad-folio, for job interviews. One day I just started Journaling in it instead. Much better use of it desu. And it makes my schizo thoughts seem way more important than they are

[Anonymous No.19230349]

>>19230342
Neither of those have made any difference

[Anonymous No.19230353]

>>19230336
Drama queen

[Anonymous No.19230371]

>>19229208
No, i never liked the format. If I have a thought about a certain topic then I’ll just write an essay about it, journals are too personal I guess.

[Anonymous No.19230394]

>>19230336
>>19230143
>>19230122
you guys are trying way too hard. you write like you want someone to find your diary after you kill yourselves and hope they see how tortured your life was. write like a human being.

>>19230099
show us your tits

[Anonymous No.19230408]

I started a journal some months ago. Every day is like half a page filled with "today I ate x and y, went to work, came back, shitposted on 4chan and went to sleep".
I feel like I'm doing this wrong and considered stopping, I think I'm too boring of a person to hold a journal. Maybe if I keep at it for 20 years I can sell the whole thing as some sort of post-modern art.

[Anonymous No.19230683]

>>19230336
jeeus christ you're either a hot chick or an annoying closet fag

[Anonymous No.19230700]

>>19230066
Here's mine from a few months ago

My recent diary entries consist of incoherent ramblings about danganronpa. And it is incredibly boring

[Anonymous No.19230704]

>>19230700
Also here's some leftovers from my rwby ww1 project.

I don't care about it much since I'm working on a different project now. But if you want more, just ask me

[Anonymous No.19230719]

>>19230408
https://youtu.be/h5QmKDOo9VU

[Anonymous No.19230724]

I kept a schizo journal for a while.

[Anonymous No.19230725]

>>19230704
>Also here's some leftovers from my rwby ww1 project.

[Anonymous No.19230742]

>>19230066
I'm 33 years old this month.

The thought of drinking has come to me throughout the day. It's here strongly now, in the afternoon, as I think of how old I am, and how young I have been, and all the time I spent alone and miserable and desperate for distraction.

I slept 12 hours. I went to bed at some time around 1.30am and I woke at around 1.30pm. I build up such a debt of sleep in the week, it jumps on me at the weekend and holds me down and takes all of my time prisoner.

Poets to look at: Richard Eberhart, Theodore Roethke, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, William Stafford, James Wright, John Haines, Denise Levertov, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, Lucille Clifton

I tried reading the Mary Oliver book on how to write poetry but it was formatted terribly and the content itself didn't seem very good anyway (though the content on phonetics was new to me and very interesting). That's where I got that list of poets to look at.

I downloaded William Stafford, it was short so I opened it straight away and read. And the top of my head blew away.

>>19230408
My life is as dull as yours but I enjoy it very much now. I may retread a lot of things, sleeping, shitting, wanking, working etc. but my thoughts and moods, my dreams, the things I read, the conversations I have at work, these are all different and I am glad I write them down. I haven't missed a day in a long time.

[Anonymous No.19230895]

>>19230232
stop it

[Anonymous No.19231260]

i don't wanna post my journal it's all personal lamentation or chastisement, or grandiose schizo ramblings.

but regarding orthography, does anyone else change things? the digraph th occurs in a lot of common words so i write it as þorn. i also write ng as n with a (straight) tail. have some shorthands but i avoid using too much. n = and, þ = the, etc. i'm wary of changing it too much because i might forget how to write standardly.

i was instead going to create my own phonemic script for handwriting, rather than amend english's current, but i don't want to start using the letters and assignments i've got without it being perfect. i feel it has to be more... scientific. i don't want to waste time learning iterations so i've put it off. i'm unsure how it should work as well.
e.g. should the most common sounds relative to the most common words have the simplest letters or should the letters instead be assigned to allow good cursivity in common words? is cursivity even very useful? i don't bother much with it as it stands, especially the loopy style, because it's less efficient and causes ambiguity (unsuited to latin letters i would say). i think the best case would be letters that often fit together perfectly, no need to draw a connector, and not connecting if they don't. so it would likely be semi-cursive. but is it better to focus on this semi-cursivity or just making the simplest letters most common and ensuring the more elaborate ones are for rare sounds.

[Anonymous No.19231432]

My family have kept a comfy google doc journal ever since the start of quarantine. Sometimes we read and discuss books, sometimes we write about the news in the places where we live, sometimes we have weeks where we take photographs of nature or household objects or colours. We save the latest episode of In Our Time for saturdays, and we all listen to it and make notes at the same time. Intentionally writing for immediate public consumption, even if it is by my family, does limit the things that you can write about, but slow, deliberate communication and absolute necessity to write every day have given me a new appreciation for writing.

[Anonymous No.19231887]

>>19231432
Sound comfy. Jelly of the senpai communication.

Found mine from 2011.

[Anonymous No.19231899]

>>19229236
Jim from the Office?

[Anonymous No.19231919]

>>19230244
what type of journal is that and where did you buy it?
(also neat handwriting)

[Anonymous No.19231942]

>>19231260
I use formal logic, math, etc. symbols and mix in some words from other languages to make my journal hell to decipher for whoever finds it. Good idea with the digraphs, I might start that as well.

[Anonymous No.19232069]

>>19231887
Did you end up marrying that girl? I know I'm stuck in the same situation

[Anonymous No.19232150]

how do you guys hold pens? i've been doing it like this for all of my life and it's one of the biggest reasons discouraging me from keeping a handwritten journal. it's just painful, and i never learned another way to do it.

[Anonymous No.19232166]

>>19232069
Negative, my dude. It was for the best. That was 10 years ago. Since then I’ve known (in the normal and biblical sense) some amazing women, and I’m happy with my current gf.

Sometimes I look back in my journal to remind me how easily is to deceive oneself. Even if you think you understand the mechanism of deception -in my situation it was the physical contact; what Schopy wrongfully called ‘nature’s stratagem to perpetuate the species’.

There’s always better thing ahead, my dude. Work in yourself, be better, have faith or maybe act as if God existed. I believe in you.

[Anonymous No.19232287]

>>19230244
I'm a lawyer. It cracks me up that we use padfolios and accessories like this out of utility, and lit pseuds see it and try to turn it into a weird stylistic statement. This is the nerd version of sagging your pants because prisoners do it.

[Anonymous No.19232338]

>>19232150
i think i did use a similar grip for most of my life – it really hurt after writing longer texts
try to force yourself to use a tripod grip

[Anonymous No.19232429]

>>19232287
>sagging your pants because prisoners do it
why do prisoners do it?
>>19232287
>padfolios
So that's what they're called. I had one of these things gifted to me years ago and I'm not sure if I like it or hate it. Sometimes I pick it up and use it again and it feels like it's useful but other times I hate it because it doesn't exactly fit what I want to do with it. Years ago I fell for the ring organizer meme and I liked a few things about but fuck paying $20 for a stupid refill is too much and without doing modular shenanigans there's no point in a binder. It's better to get a bound agenda and copy things over. Ring binder organizers like Filofax are fucking gay.

[Anonymous No.19232441]

>>19232150
good meme

[Anonymous No.19232449]

>>19232150
Get a fountain pen. It requires absolutely no pressure to write. Get a Lamy Safari, due to it's shape, it forces you into tripod grip.

[Anonymous No.19232514]

>>19232287
I found a new use for a thing that I would never touch otherwise but go nuts I guess. Not everything is performative

[Anonymous No.19232623]

>>19232287
>lawyer
Post disregarded schlomo

[Anonymous No.19232754]

>>19230066

[Anonymous No.19232941]

Imagine printing

[Anonymous No.19232982]

>>19232754
>he greentexts in his own journal
that is interesting

[Anonymous No.19233004]

I can't find a single page that is clean enough to post but it's my personal confessional and drawings. I think my journal is the prettiest byproduct of my existence.

[Anonymous No.19233018]

>>19229208
From the age of 7 at least once a year I wrote in the same notebook a observation

[Anonymous No.19233054]

>>19232514
>Takes special pictures of journal to post on the internet
>It's not performative, it's just me being my realest and most truest self

Is this new sincerity?

[Anonymous No.19233068]

>>19233054
Not him but I think zoomers do this subconsciously so it's probably not malicious when people do this. You should draw the line at intentionally performative acts because in the era of social media everything is performative. This whole thread is about taking pictures of your private journal, it's kind of weird.

[Anonymous No.19233234]

>he doesn't journal inside his head in the same fantasy world he's cultivated since before the womb

[Anonymous No.19233296]

>>19233054
>>19233068
>Do you have a journal?
>Yes I have a journal, here is a picture of my journal, which is right in front of me at this moment
I can't make any simpler than that

[Anonymous No.19233389]

>>19231942
>mix in some words from other languages
i think i'll do this too. it sounds fun.

i also considered making a language for personal writings but i don't think it'd be worth the effort. a language is rich by virtue of having lots of content and speakers and words and history, as well as your fluency in that. it would be hard to generate all that yourself while being original and it will be second rate anyway. i've made languages before and i noticed this, they very often lack their own 'culture sphere' if you get my meaning and exist as this vague, undefined thing within and reliant on a preexisting sphere.

[Anonymous No.19233518]

>>19233389
>i've made languages before and i noticed this, they very often lack their own 'culture sphere' if you get my meaning and exist as this vague, undefined thing within and reliant on a preexisting sphere.
i realised this was a dumb way of putting. basically: they don't have their own culture/worldview and cannot generate their own culture/worldview. they have to take from another and in doing so are incomplete or reliant on another language/culture.

[Anonymous No.19233596]

>>19229208
Basically I mock Plato and Nietzsche while pretending I’m a smarty pants

[Anonymous No.19233650]

>>19229208
I really struggle to express my thoughs, observations or feelings when talking to others, so I meditate a little and I write down everything that I have in my mind. It certainly feels good to write all of this somewhere.

[Anonymous No.19233695]

I mostly keep a coffee diary these days and it's pretty boring.

>>19233650
>>19230336
>>19230066
/lit/ has nice handwriting. You guys write daily? I used to do a bit of calligraphy but I've really lost my knack for it after a decade of neglect.

[Anonymous No.19233711]

i write my thoughts down so i can laugh at them later

[Anonymous No.19234079]

>>19232166
>maybe act as if God existed.
>gf
lol

[Anonymous No.19234186]

>>19229208
I used to journal extensively, but recently for some reason I can't do it. It gives me some kind of existential terror. I wish I could explain it. Suffice it to say I can't stare down my own mind like that any more. Now I can only write about a subject other than my own life and thoughts. It's more productive that way in any case.

[Anonymous No.19234198]

Observations about people around me. Also self reflection and ways to improve myself.

[Anonymous No.19234214]

>>19229223
fuck

[Anonymous No.19234366]

>>19229208
I update it approximately once a month and write about my progress in life

[Anonymous No.19234416]

>>19229223

Then you're well-prepared to write young-adult romance novels! Go cash in!

[Anonymous No.19234489]

>>19230704
> ww1 project
sounds cool my fellow autist

just a note on the religion aspect: their entire society revolves around negative emotions meaning death. If anything they'd be stoics or buddhists.

[Anonymous No.19235213]

What brands do you guys prefer?

[Anonymous No.19235344]

I wrote about this thread in my journal yesterday.

[Anonymous No.19235513]

>>19230236
>this
only I'm also in a relationship for some reason

[Anonymous No.19235614]

>>19229223
Bas3d

[Anonymous No.19235644]

I started writing one on my 22nd birthday in the hopes it would hold be accountable for all the things I hope to do but always put off.
I made myself a promise that even if I fail all other goals I should at least keep writing every day in order to hold myself accountable and spur action.
It's mostly just a collection of actions I wish to take starting the next day and philosophical musings to motivate myself.

[Anonymous No.19235652]

>>19229208
Any journal I try to keep quickly turns into a sketchbook instead. The same thing inevitably happened to all of my lecture notes from university. Unfortunately, the pictograms I was left with could have multiple interpretations.

[Anonymous No.19235657]

>>19229208
Yes. I write small essays, many hot-takes, notes for what I am reading, small poems, and transcribe select passages of literature or poetry that I admire greatly.

Also this >>19229223, although that was more so the case when I was younger. I've been journaling for 5-6 years now, and while the weltschmerz was intense and cringy in my early twenties, it is tempered now.

>>19229234
For me at least, a large part of the benefit of journaling by hand is that it goes slow enough that I am forced to think through what I write. Many of my most beautiful uses of language from there is a result of the slowness of writing by hand.

[Anonymous No.19235935]

>>19230099
extremely kafkaesque

[Anonymous No.19236688]

>>19229208
I've already got a place where I keep my own thoughts; my fuckin head.

[Anonymous No.19236694]

How do you write a journal withought feeling like a 12 year old girl putting her feelings in a book

[Anonymous No.19236696]

>>19236688
that's the problem big guy. you lose them.

[Anonymous No.19236703]

>>19236696
If I do then they're not worth having.

[Anonymous No.19236857]

>>19229208
I write my thoughts and feelings of the day down on notebook paper, to externalize what's in my head. I proceed to throw it away because after expelling that waste from my head, I don't want to take it back in by reading it, nor would I like anyone else to see it.

[Anonymous No.19237318]

>>19236694
Did he felt like a 12 year old girl?

[Anonymous No.19237630]

>>19236694
>Writing a diary helps you gain insight about yourself and your own thoughts
>Writing a diary was also increasingly deemed as childish and propagandized as a "girly" activity as literacy increased
>White males are now experiencing record amounts of depression
>White males are now told to go to shrinks instead of doing other mental exercises, such as writing a journal
>Shrinks who are largely man-hating feminist women do a worse job than a blank piece of paper at giving insight to the depressed white male and exclusively proceed by textbook stereotypes written mostly by other man-hating feminist women
>White males kill themselves in droves or submit to having libido killing and brain destroying drugs administered to themselves
Gee I wonder why such a thing came to be all of a sudden in such a short time, when writing a journal was perfectly normal among literate men

[Anonymous No.19237706]

>>19237318
He probably would if he was writing today

[Anonymous No.19237743]

>>19237630
Andrei Tarkovsky
Eric Rohmer
Leni Riefenstahl
Carl Theodor Dreyer
D.W Griffith
Whit Stillman
John Ford
Yasujirō Ozu
Maurice Pialat
Almost every single classical composer and artist pre 20th century

[Anonymous No.19237760]

>>19230122
>>19230143
>>19230244
>>19230336
>>19230700
>>19230704
>>19231887
>>19232754
>Paper
Don't you guys worry someone will find that shit?

[Anonymous No.19237770]

>>19237760
actually, that's my fetish

[Anonymous No.19237776]

>>19237760
I write it in cursive and in a foreign language. Nobody will ever put that much effort into reading my shit.

[Anonymous No.19237779]

I was thinking of keeping a journal so that my children know more about me when I'm older and forget. Dementia runs in the family, so I'm not confident that my later years will be pleasant.

[Anonymous No.19237856]

>>19237630
anti intellectualism as pushed by the far right

[Anonymous No.19238256]

>>19237779
Sounds like a good idea anon. Maybe it'll even help you regain yourself at some point, if you'll be lucid enough to still understand your own writing.
Alternatively, I once read there was some nun who transcribed books all day and reached 100 years or something without any sign of alzheimer's or mental deterioration. Just writing and reading in itself might end up good for you.

[Anonymous No.19238822]

>>19236694
stop being gay niggers been writing journals since paper existed

[Anonymous No.19238936]

>>19229236
The world may never know of how infatuated I was with my muse, were it not for my lonely journal hiding amid by books.

[Anonymous No.19239384]

>>19232150
I grab it just like that, I just endure the pain

[Anonymous No.19239396]

>>19229236
It's not an entirely unwarranted fear, at least in my case. When I was in high school I left my journal in my English class, and the teacher, upon discovering it, was nosy enough to read through it. There were a lot of unsavory things in that journal, though nothing unusual for a teenage boy: sexual fantasies, half-finished love poems, Bateman-esque doodling, entries detailing my tumultuous and unfortunate academic life. What ended up getting me called into the office, though, were the myriad and heavy-handed references to suicide. The administration assigned me to one of their cardigan-wrapped therapists for the following month before they realized I wasn't going to kill anybody. I really hate that bug-eyed rat-woman of an English teacher, even if her intentions were noble.

[Anonymous No.19239424]

>>19232150
Assuming you aren't just meme-ing, this is the correct way to hold a pen.

[Anonymous No.19239434]

>>19229208
at first i used it to remind myself different things, but it didn't take too long before i started writing whatever i had on my mind at any moment. i also wrote a curse in it so anyone else who reads it is totally fucked for life.

[Anonymous No.19239656]

I usually fire up the journaling engines when I get depressed, so about every 3 months. I'll write down 2-3 pages of whatever's on my mind and how I feel. Basically I vent and set it aside for another 3 months. I also write like some family member is reading the journal decades after my death, because I'd love to do that with my ancestor's journals, but I think I would be embarrassed even in the afterlife if that happened.