journaling

I admit that I'm not the best journaler in the world. I have trouble keeping a daily routine in something that's not a necessity, though to be honest I haven't really pushed myself to do so. I do have pen-and-paper journal at the moment, and I jot down something in it every once in a while when something important happens and I suddenly remember to. Even then my entries are rather short and don't usually contain all my thoughts on a subject/event. This is mostly because a) I write slow and b) I journal at night when I'm already tired. So my paper journaling tends to be sporatic at best. I think I'd started journaling in Word once, but for some reason I just keep forgetting to return to it. Too lazy to open up Word, maybe. However, since I've started watching Oprah recently, I went poking around on her website and discovered an online journal section. It offers about four or five different types of journals (e.g. daily, gratitude, health, create-your-own, etc), the purpose of which is to provide direction and helps you reflect on different parts of your life. It's already working pretty well for me because a) I type way faster than I write, b) I put a link to it on my Mozilla toolbar and it's the most natural thing to go there while I'm online, and c) the guidelines give me something to write even when I don't think I have something to write about. AND it's searchable. Yay! Thank you, Oprah.

I suppose some people might be worrying about the privacy issues of journaling online. No, the journal section is not on a secure site and any hacker with a little diligence might be able to hack it. But...what for? Sure, the stuff I write isn't something I'd let other people read, mostly because it's where I work out my thought processes and feelings. If someone I know were to read it (since I don't know why someone I don't know would even bother or care), I wouldn't be that embarassed about it either because it's nothing I wouldn't tell people if they had asked. As Dr. Phil said (I think it was him), "People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing."