Day One

I’m trying to write more. 

I know, I tweet a lot. But I want to write. I want to figure out what I really believe, what moves me. I want to know why I do the things I do. I’m convinced that if I (re)learn to write more privately that I will write more here. But I’ve been trying to figure out that process. I used to jot thoughts down in Moleskins, but that hasn’t been the case for a couple years now. So what will work best for my new routine?

Well, I’ve been using Day One for a while now, and I couldn’t be happier with it. I won’t go on too much about it, but it does a few things that I really admire. 

First, it syncs to Dropbox. Secondly, it syncs to both my iPhone and my iPad. And the simplicity of the app is great. Also, I can upload a photo for each entry, which give me a visual reminder of that day when I look back on my timeline, and I can write for as long or short as I can for that day. Lastly, and perhaps most important, is I can set reminders to write. I know I can do this with a calendar app, but being able to open my journal directly from the reminder has proven to be way more successful than creating an event that clutters up my calendar and, frankly, causes dread to look at every day. This may sound strange, but seeing ”write in your journal” on my calendar at 10:30pm everyday overwhelmed me. It seemed like a chore. The little push notification I get from Day One every day is a nice little nudge. It comes across as friendly, like it’s doing my a favor. 

There’s more to the app, but these are the things I like about it. And I’m sure there are more features to come. I don’t want to make any promises about how I’ll be writing more, but I thought a little note about it here would help break the ice. 

Folks who have been following my blog for a while have probably noticed I don’t post often anymore, and when I do it’s my own work or links to things I’ve done. That has been a deliberate decision. A few months ago I even deleted most of my old posts (over 2,000 of them, in fact!) that were other people’s works. It was good, for a while, to keep a sort of flat file of others’ work, but it buried the stuff that I wanted people to see when they came to my site: my own work and words. Plus, there are plenty of other better blogs to find cool stuff! 

So here we are. My words. My work. Hey, it’s my website, what did you expect?

Cheers.