I’ve done it again. Made plans with myself to do two things, both of which have been bubbling along in my head for a few months now, both of which will take a fair amount of prep work, but it feels like the right time to do them.
Not in an ‘ohh it’s almost the end of the year I’d better get this shit done’ kinda way, more an acceptance that both tasks will take some months to complete, and planning for that accordingly.
It started when Apple released their Journal app.
It started after another round of trying to find an easier/nicer way to blog.
Journalling
I’ve used Day One since 2011. Not everyday, far from it, but there are still ~2000 entries in there. Some of them are meaningful to me, dealing with deeper thoughts and emotions, some are a little performative (hindsight eh!) in terms of trying different styles of journalling (3 Things that went well today… etc), and some which, as I’ve started looking back at them, make no sense to me whatsoever but must’ve felt important enough at the time to write down?
Yes I’m slowly reviewing these, month at a time, and moving (copy/paste) them from Day One to Apple Journal.
My long term aim is to ditch Day One. I don’t use many of its extra features, it’s always been more private note/diary than personal improvement tool, so Apple Journal meets my needs, plus having it baked into the Apple ecosystem means that I can easily capture days that include photos I’ve taken.
Yes, there are some improvements that Apple could add (an Import feature would be useful right now!), but it’s good enough for me.
Blog
My blog has always been text focussed. I’ve posted a few photos here and there but mostly used Flickr for that, and now Instagram but I don’t really do photography any more, just take snapshots of my life so it’s not as important to me as it was back when I had time/money/desire to treat photography as a hobby.
I started my blog in 1999 with hand written HTML code but the focus was always on the words. I had (and still have) no real direction for it, it’s just thoughts and life commentary, my public diary if you will.
Looking back over the early years there is a LOT of posts which make no sense, or have zero value today (links to websites that no longer exist, one line commentary on something I can’t even remember now, etc) and so I’m starting to cull those from my current blog, with a view to slimming it down to only things I want to keep.
Once I’ve done that I will start looking at moving it from hosted WordPress to somewhere else that is simpler, cheaper, and has fewer hoops to jump through. Bear is where I’m leaning at present but that’s not set in stone and as it’ll be several months before I get to that stage, I’ll reassess then.
Less stuff
It’s no coincidence that these are the two digital tasks I’ve chosen to undertake given my recent post about Legacy and the things we leave behind us. Inheriting the digital photos and files from my Dad’s PC is something I haven’t even considered yet either and, to be honest, I’m not sure I will beyond a cursor look.
It does feel odd though, in today’s technology climate where storage isn’t really an issue if you have the money. And I’m not doing any of this to save money, more to try and keep my digital life less cluttered. Many years ago I took the same approach with my physical belongings too, and I’m taking the same approach digitally. If it has some value to me, keep it, if it doesn’t, delete it.
It’s an ongoing process I know, I only need look as far as my wardrobe for proof that while I’m pretty good at decluttering, I’m not great at stopping it build up again. It’s a cycle, a rinse and repeat that I could avoid if I were more mindful as I went along, something I’m hoping I will apply digitally moving forward too and, looking at this blog and the types of posts I’ve published over the past few years I think I’ve got the hang of…
As ever though, time will tell. I may well be posting about this topic again (again) in a few years time.
