Diehard journal keepers who started the writing habit many years ago may cringe at the idea of keeping a digital or online journal. In fact, I’m one of those people. I enjoy the hands-on feel of the pen, marker or pencil sliding across the page, the way the pages sound as I turn them and even the glue that accidentally gets stuck to another page when you paste in momentous.
In this technological day and age, however, you have a choice: You can wield your pen and pretty journal or you can tap a couple of keys and access an electronic journal to cut and paste pictures with the click of a button, somewhat effortlessly find photos and graphics stored on your computer or in a cloud as well as print and share. Let’s look at the differences.
Writing Or Typing: Which Journal Keeping Type Is Right For You?
Digital Journaling vs Paper Journaling
For our purposes here we’re going to use the term online and digital journaling interchangeably, however, digital journaling is specific to using a journal that’s stored on your computer. With online journals you have the ability to access your entries from multiple devices and don’t have to worry about storing a bunch of notebooks. With some you can even convert to pdf format for storage on your computer or printing then binding.
When using a physical journal sometimes they are more accessible for review, but if you spend most of your time on one gadget or another then you will probably enjoy online journaling better. For one, you won’t have to carry around a bulky journal and you won’t have to worry about printing out photos to paste into your journal.
There are positives and negatives to each choice; you’ll just have to determine what will be the right choice for you. Before you decide which one you want to use you have to first determine your purpose for keeping one and what you hope to gain. Then do a little research about digital journaling and test a few of the software and websites.
I’ve been keeping a journal since 1979 and I think I’m going to stick to the old pen and paper method. Another choice is creative journaling, which started doing not too long ago. It involves using color, bullet statements, lists, magazine cutouts for collage and any other medium you can think of.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to journaling. What do you think: are you going to convert online or digital journaling? If so take a second ad share your experience in the comments below.
Image: iStockPhoto
