I have heard from SEVERAL people who keep journals that your “blank spots” in your journal have just as big a story to tell as your daily entries do. Maybe, like me, you were in the hospital. Maybe someone else was in the hospital. Maybe, heaven forbid, your laptop got stolen. Maybe it was just a time in the year at your place of employment where you were incredibly busy.

It’s OK not to write in your journal from time to time! It’s ALSO OK to resist the urge to not chronicle those lost days, weeks, or months with a minute-by-minute or day-by-day recap of events. By all means, if you want to write in your journal about what kept you from writing for an extended length of time, write about it. Just don’t get caught up in the minute details of every day that you didn’t write. I find that that “obsession” with wanting to recap every little thing gets in the way of beginning your writing again. It becomes scary to think about recapping every little detail since you last wrote, and then you just don’t want to write, because the prospect of writing every little morsel of detail becomes too daunting a task. By all means, SUMMARIZE things that have happened since you last wrote, but if, for example, someone has been in the hospital since you last wrote, and is now healthy again, it’s not necessary to write about what their blood pressure was on Tuesday, August 3, at 6:45 PM. It was important at the time, yes, but it’s not that important anymore now that the person is out of the hospital. Hopefully, you can understand where I’m going with this.

• Backup is easy, because journals are just files on your hard drive. You can put them wherever you like.
• Instead of using vendor specific file formats we use SQLite database format, which is widely accepted. Also, Mémoires has built-in export to RTF and plain text formats.

Some good points I haven’t seen elsewhere, like using software.

When you usually think of a journal it’s just a pen and paper affair.

Will pass this post along.

Great stuff.