Do you have a journal or a diary? If so, what do you like to write about in it, and why? Do you use it to process your feelings or rant about your friends and family? Or do you write to ruminate on your crushes and worries? Do you detail your dreams — both literal and figurative?
If you don’t journal, have you ever thought about starting but just didn’t know how?
In a guest essay, “An Analog Library of All the Lives I’ve Lived,” Josephine Sittenfeld writes about the power of journals — and the stories they tell about us:
After a routine iPhone update, a new Journal app recently appeared. Intrigued, I tapped it, which led to the instruction “Enable journaling suggestions.” If I agreed, my phone promised to give prompts like “Take a moment to write about something special in your life you’ve been taking for granted” and “Take a look around you and take a picture of something you’ve overlooked. What do you notice about it?”
Apple is attempting to lure me into the world of Journaling 2.0, complete with the help of artificial intelligence. The app promises meaningful reflection, apparently gleaned from my phone usage, that I can share with people around me via Bluetooth. In the multipage permissions, the creepiest line explained that all I would have to do is tap a button for the app to utilize “information about your workouts, media use, communications and photos,” which would “create meaningful suggestions for you.”
This isn’t the first time outside forces have suggested I reflect on my life. About 34 years ago, when I was 9, a family member gave me a “Ramona Quimby Diary.” The spiral-bound book contained a page of stickers that said, “Extra special!” and “Private! Keep out!” as well as leading prompts like, “This month I was really happy when …” and “The nicest person in my class is ….” Around then, a friend of my parents gave me another journal, with the title “My Private World.” That cover has a pensive, apron-wearing, barefoot girl seated under a sinewy tree, nestled alongside a dog, two cats and a book, with rolling mountains in the distance. I’ve never felt a connection to the girl, blissfully lost in thought in her bucolic setting. But the journal’s title? That spoke to me. It still does.
I’ve kept a journal ever since. I have an oversize Tupperware bin in my basement containing dozens of musty diaries. Each is filled with anecdotes from my life, scrawled in sloppy handwriting, riddled with misspellings. They’re filled with rants about friends, family and feelings. They contain my shames and terrors, my crushes, my dreams (both literal and figurative), my worries and mundane accounts of more than 30 years of my life.
Ms. Sittenfeld concludes her essay by comparing the power of analog journals to digital ones:
I recently photographed my diaries set against sentimental garments: delicate, pint-size floral dresses my mom saved from the 1980s and stretched-out extra-large T-shirts from the 1990s. By making these photographs, I entered a portal to my youth, simultaneously connecting with my angsty, decorative, teenage self and appreciating her from afar. They remind me of who I was, who I’ve always been and, to some extent, who I still am. Whether or not it’s healthy, on some level, holding on to the stuff of my youth makes it more bearable to swallow the fact that time is always, incessantly, marching on.
Which brings me back to that iPhone update. I still don’t fully understand Apple’s new Journal app. If it weren’t for the eerie fact that it mines phone usage to prompt reflection, I would be open to trying it. Regardless, I’m curious what changes when journaling moves into the cloud. Paging through an old diary is an emotional, time-travel experience. If a teenager today uses the Journal app, what will her experience be decades from now? Assuming the technology exists to retrieve her writing, will revisiting an online journal have the same power to transport her back in time? What’s her online equivalent of me holding the crispy, lined pages of my spiral-bound books from decades ago, touching the stickers, seeing my childhood handwriting and doodles in the margins?
Students, read the entire essay and then tell us:
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Do you keep a diary or a journal? If so, what do you like to write about?
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If you don’t journal, why not? Did reading the article persuade you to try? What else do you do to process or chronicle each day?
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What do you see as the benefits of journaling? What advice would you give to others who are hesitant to keep a diary or are not sure what to write about?
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Journals are a kind of time capsule for world events and your own life. Of rereading and photographing her collection of more than 30 years, Ms. Sittenfeld writes: “Paging through the diaries now. I’m startled to realize how far I’ve come and also how little I’ve changed.” If you were to look at your journals 20 or 30 years from now, what story do you think they would tell? What do you think you could learn about yourself?
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At the end of Ms. Sittenfeld’s essay, she wonders what is lost when journaling moves into a digital space and diaries are saved on the cloud: “Paging through an old diary is an emotional, time-travel experience. If a teenager today uses the Journal app, what will her experience be decades from now?” What do you think of digital journals? Can they ever capture the magic of analog ones? Would you ever consider using a digital journal?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.