How and why I journal

For almost 20 years I’ve maintained a journal for my family. I recently met someone interested in this practice, so I’m documenting it here for both them and anyone else that might benefit from it.

Why I journal

Our memories are not only terrible, but they’re terrible in a particularly insidious way: when something hilarious or interesting happens, the event feels certain to be something you will remember. Sadly, the strength of that conviction bears no relation to the likelihood you will actually remember that moment.

This isn’t just a supposition — I have proof!

My own family journal now extensively documents nearly two decades of our lives. I often reread portions of this family journal, and frequently rediscover stories which I had completely forgotten. Sometimes I’ll share the rediscovered story on my family chat, and everyone else in the family says that they’d forgotten it too. And for the stories I (or we) do remember, our journal generally includes details we’d forgotten.

The family memory loss is particularly acute in our kids’ early years. The early years of parenting are so packed, and yet nearly all of it is forgotten.

Preserving these moments in a durable way lets us enjoy them over and over.

Beyond using a journal as a memory prosthesis, I also share this journal content in various ways with extended family and friends. I find this provides a good way to let people know what we’re doing, and in a manner free from corporate exploitation.

Over the years I’ve learned that our journal can also be a good way to document things like the name of a restaurant we may want to return to. With that in mind, I sometimes take care to write down details that are not crucial to recalling the story, but might be useful later. Example: when my family goes car camping, I record the campsite number in case we want the same site later. Occasionally one of my kids will reach out to ask me for some detail like this.

How to start

It doesn’t matter how you start, only that you start.

• Create a new note on your phone, or a text file, or a new Google Document, or anything. You could do this right now. At the beginning, it doesn’t matter what form you pick; you can change your mind later.
• The next time something happens in your family, write down a few words that you think will help trigger the memory of that event. If you want to try this now, think of something funny that happened this past week.
• You don’t have to push yourself to do this on a schedule (although you can certainly do that if you want), just do it whenever something interesting happens.
• If you do this but fall out of the habit, it doesn’t matter if there’s a gap. Come back to this whenever you want.
• If your partner is interested, pick some collaborative form in which you can both write.

If you do this for a few weeks, when you open up the note/file/doc, you are guaranteed to find something you had already forgotten.

There are plenty of purpose-built systems for journaling and sharing. If you want to use one of those, go ahead. But at the beginning it might be better to do the simplest thing that could possibly work until you can identify your real needs.

How I journal today

This is what my practice looks like today after many years of iteration. This is probably not how you should start.

• When something interesting or funny happens in my family that I think would be worth remembering, I make a small note on my phone with just a few words that will trigger the memory. I make the note in my to-do list app so I’ll see it when I’m back at my desk.
• If I’m traveling, I will generally record moments from the trip in a note or a Google Doc that I can edit offline. Family trips have many such moments, so I will often do this at the end of the day. Since my focus is on traveling, I’m just writing down enough words that I can recall the story after the trip. The entry for a typical travel day might include a date and 10 lines of such words.
• If the event has been captured in a photo, that alone might suffice as a reminder. I periodically review my recent photos for things I want to add to the family journal.
• When my time allows, I expand those few words and/or photo into a story. I want to capture sufficient detail that someone who wasn’t there will still understand why the moment was interesting. As it happens, this may also be the same amount of detail needed for us ourselves to reconstruct the event years later.
• A typical story might just be a paragraph. A humorous photo might stand on its own without comment. For a full day of family travel, the story might run for many paragraphs with multiple photos.
• The story text goes into a markdown file with all the stories for that month. I’ve organized those files into folders by year.
• The markdown and photo files are stored in a local git repository and pushed to the network.
• I turn that content into a site using Web Origami. The site has a page for each month. I share that site URL with family and friends but avoid posting it publicly.
• The site includes an RSS feed. I doubt anyone else subscribes directly, but I subscribe to the feed myself so that, when I see the story later in my feed reader, I can confirm everything’s working. The feed is also used to produce the newsletter (below).

I used to go to lengths to enable editing of the full journal content directly on my phone, but I rarely did that and it added complexity. Nowadays I don’t bother.

Monthly newsletters are great

Since few people will visit our site on a regular basis, our family journal feed is also used by an email newsletter service. On the first of each month, this service sends the previous month’s stories to a set of friends and relatives. I don’t really monitor whether people read it, but it’s clear that some people really like it.

For what it’s worth, I receive a similar newsletter from a friend, and once a month turns out to be plenty often. Social media sites provide far more personal content than I generally want; I don’t need to know everything a friend, their spouse/partner, or their kids are doing on a daily basis.

I currently use MailChimp for this service, which is adequate but I don’t love it. I may switch to something like Buttondown in the future.

How to write good family holiday letters

At the end of each year I review our journal stories for the year, and collect what I think are the best into an annual family holiday letter. I copy the complete story text into a new document, then edit it down so that I can fit the letter on a single sheet of double-sided paper. I add photos to this, then send the thing for bulk printing at FedEx.

I think it’s interesting to receive some condensed digest of what happened in a family over a year. The problem is that most people can’t sit down in December and remember the funny or interesting things that happened over the concluding year.

Instead, what people can remember are: 1) destinations they traveled to, and 2) milestones like births, graduations, weddings, awards, and deaths. Such a list achieves the impressive feat of being simultaneously boastful and boring. It’s just not interesting to hear that you all went to Rome or that Blake graduated from middle school. A little bit of such news is obviously appropriate, but don’t fill the letter with it.

What is interesting in a family holiday letter:

• Stories that reveal personalities, particularly of the kids who are growing up. For that to work, I take care to include at least some story for each of my children (and my wife and I as well) that reflects some aspect of the person’s nature.
• Variety: a story that touches on a possibly mundane but unique family routine or tradition; a story (just one or two) about a treasured pet; a story about your physical house or neighborhood; a family story connected to a regional, national, or global news event.
• Humility. The holidays are supposed to be a joyful time, but that doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself to 100% positive news. It’s okay to mention that a concert got rained out or a trip was too packed. If something truly bad happened, there may be a way to indicate or touch on that without making the entire letter depressing. If a story is mildly embarassing or sensitive, clear its inclusion with the person in question.
• Progression: a story that builds on something you mentioned in a previous year.

Friends and family routinely tell us that they love receiving our letter, and I’m pretty sure they’re not all saying that just to be polite.

The family journal and the holiday letter are separate ideas; you could do one without the other. But if you want to write a good holiday letter, your task will be much easier if you’re keeping a journal.