chronicle
For those who’ve followed my work for a minute, you know that for years now, I’ve been a pretty avid journaler. I came to journaling well into adulthood, and while I’ve never been a “Dear Diary” sort, my journal has always acted as a tool (albeit a colourful one), one that I’ve used for planning career moves, for first drafts of articles or book chapters, and of course, as a chronicle of my life. The chronicle part sometimes includes thoughts and emotions, but more often is comprised of to-do lists and logs of things I accomplished during the day. I’ve found journaling so transformative, I’ve encouraged readers of my last two books to incorporate it into their own lives.
But I’ve been thinking a lot more about chronicling, lately, and I’ve come to believe that intentionally doing so is absolutely critical in these times. Whenever I’ve spoken about keeping a journal in the past, I’ve shared its benefits for helping clarify thoughts and map out intentions. “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means. What I want and what I fear," said Joan Didion, a champion journaler herself. But these days, I think that going forward, we need to chronicle our lives for bigger, more global reasons. Because I wonder what historians 250 years from now will use to write their accounts of what life was like in the early twenty-first century.
Think about it: so much of what we do that leaves evidence of our lives is ephemeral. For example, I — like I suspect many of you — have hard drives full of photographs that sit idle on defunct computers. So many “creators” create on Instagram, TikTok, or other online platforms that can be banned or erased at the whim of technocrats or even the government. Digital calendars and task apps can be left behind by upgrades and more updated technology, leaving access to the records of the dates of our appointments, parties, birthdays of friends and families, momentous occasions and milestones obsolete. And don’t even get me started on AI, making it impossible to tell, in hindsight, what was created by a real, breathing human being, and what was created by a bot.
All of this — especially in a time when there are governments around the world literally trying to erase entire communities of people — feels alarming, to say the least.
For these reasons, I’ve been doubling-down on what it means to create in hard copy: not just for my own benefit (and, let’s face it, mental health), but also to leave evidence that I was here. Artifacts of my life, that sort of thing. For me, this means returning to a more committed journaling practice,* but also considering other ways that I can leave evidence of my life, even in ways that might feel old-fashioned. Things like handwritten to-do lists, of course. But also letter-writing: remember the delight of receiving snail mail? Remember pen pals? Or how about marginalia: writing our thoughts and reactions in the margins of the books that we enjoy, or even inscribing books given as gifts.** Photo albums put together page-by-page, with captions written by hand (instead of using online services that will return your photographs in professional-looking, bound tomes). That sort of thing.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting doing more work than we do in our already-busy lives. But what I am wondering is: given the choices of digital and analog, is there a way to return to a more analog way of chronicling our lives that isn’t burdensome? Maybe even joyful?
It’s worth considering, I think.
So my wish for all of us this week is that spend some time considering how we keep our stories.
Because they matter.
And no government or technology should take them away from us.
* My friend Asha turned me on to The Medium Method, a way of merging both an analog journaling practice with a digital calendaring one. I’ve found it has made me exceedingly productive.
** On our most recent trip to Bath, Marcus wandered into a book store where he found an early edition of Rudyard Kipling’s book, Just So Stories for Little Children. Inside the cover was inscribed, “To Pudding.” Ever since he told me about it I’ve been wondering, who’s Pudding? And who gave them the book? Imagining the answers to these questions delights me.
a reminder of cadence.