I’ve dabbled in journaling before, occasionally keeping a prayer journal during my daily Bible time.  I don’t think I’ve ever set out to make a journal about my life in general.  Now that I think about it, I’m kinda surprised I never have (I like lifelogging, it’s fun).  Recently, I’ve spotted some articles online about the Day One journaling app, and I decided to give it a go.

I’m still playing around with what exactly I’m going to log.  I guess that’s the beauty of a journal: it can be anything.  It doesn’t have to have rules.  Fortunately Day One allows me to still be organized, even without rules.  Every post is automatically geotagged so I can, for example, look up all the notes I’ve taken in church.  I can also tag things manually or sort them into different notebooks.  Day One also supports Markdown, a sort of pseudo-HTML that makes formatting a snap.  I’ve fallen in love with Markdown so much that I’ve switched notes apps to one that supports it (more on that app soon).

When I downloaded Day One, there were two things I knew I wanted to log.  Firstly, I wanted a place to put down good Bible verses I discover.  Getting closer to God is a big goal of mine this year, so I’m getting more intentional about morning Bible time.  I tag all these entries with a “Bible” tag.  Secondly, I wanted to simply put my thoughts down in writing at the end of each day.  This includes a list of good things that happened that day – being more positive is another 2017 goal of mine.

Throughout the day, if something makes an impression on me, I may put it down in my journal right then, or I may simply “check in” using the widget.  This creates a blank, time- and location-stamped post that I can add words to later.  I also created a Workflow that takes the contents of my clipboard and makes a new entry, and I’ve added this to my Workflow widget.

I also find stuff to add using the app’s Activity Feed.  This timeline can pull from your calendar, photo roll, location history, and even your social posts.  Here’s the beauty of it though: Day One doesn’t automatically add all that stuff into your journal like a firehose.  Instead, it’s there for you to scroll through at the end of the day.  See anything worth saving?  A few taps creates an entry for it (stamped at the time it happened, not when you logged it).  It’s so nice to curate my memories, instead of just dumping everything in there.  I think I’m going to like this app.  ••