I kept handwritten journals from primary school through to university. In the past decade or so I’ve lost the good habit. I rarely sit down without technology - my laptop or my phone, so I decided to digitise my journal and see if that worked. It did. I created a Gmail account that I email every 1-3 days with my latest news, thoughts and meanderings. It mostly acts as a log of my mediocre life, but every now and then it’s good to vent privately about the state of something in my life or the world, or anything really.

Even though I have this blog - which is also like a weblog of my life, I still want to keep a diary of my (im)proper private thoughts because not everyone needs to know I ate breakfast in the courtyard so I could spend quality time with my plants…and the PokéStop next door. Or that I’m constipated from eating potato chips for dinner for half the week. No, really, I am that interesting I want to record every useless thought I have. But I know it’s not for everyone so I'm doing the internet a kindness and keeping a private journal.

The perks of a digital diary means I can easily search for things if I want to recall an event without manually trawling through a dozen thick A4 books to try and find a bit of information. It took me 30 minutes to figure out how old our cat was when the Vet asked her age - a quick Gmail search would have pulled it up in seconds. It’s also handy not traveling with a book. I used to write in my journal a lot when I went on holidays away - the quiet time at night not in my own home was perfect for focussed writing, but that required forethought and packing my diary in the first place. Now I can simply email my diary from my phone any time, anywhere.

For anyone wanting to keep a journal but never quite getting started or if you have a journal and dropped off because you never seem to have time to sit down and write your thoughts, I highly recommend digitising your entries. If you’re on the internet often, it makes sense to email your entries to/from an exclusive address instead of finding time to sit down with a notebook and handwriting the story of your life. You can also attach photos and videos to keep a visual diary of your memories too. I love it.