Regarding Record Keeping
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How do you guys prefer to keep your records? Digital or on paper?
I always find myself doing a bit of both. For the longest time I would keep all my entries in my book of shadows written in Theban. I find it very difficult to actually read Theban so I've recently switched back to English.I always debate myself on this whenever I keep logs. On my laptop I've got a sweet Journal app. I always record my dreams on it first thing when I wake up. I can do it very quickly & its practical. I figure for dreams and stuff, digital is the best. For magick records, I think written is better. It feels so much more sentimental. I still switch between both =/ .
Whats your take on this?
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i have found that written is best, your handwriting alone can say volumes more than your entries.
I personally keep a very simple record:
Lunar Phase
Weather
Time of Working
Working Done
Any particular part of my practice that may have stuck out.
And anything that may have affected results (i.e. drug or alcohol use, general mood, strange occurrences, arguments with the wife
etc..)A days worth of entries... mind you I typically practice for 2 1/2 to 3 hours daily and it fills up about 2 pages of a mead notebook. I keep a second journal for dream work and a third for astral work. I also leave room between entries for commentary by my neophyte.
I don't trust an electronic notebook as I have seen too many computers crash or get infected with a virus.
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I started with digital.
For me (who does technical writing/document design as part of my job), it was too tempting to go back in to add commentary, or keep revising the layout constantly.
So I switched to paper. I really enjoy how writing in pen forces one to think about their words before they start moving their pen, and the resulting economy of words and clarity of thought are great side-effects.
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Though I also use paper journals for my records, I see nothing wrong with an electronic journal, though agree there may be extra benefits to written word.
Keeping good electronic records is a simple matter of safe sensible computing and good regular well thought-out backup strategy.
In 12 years of computing I have never lost a byte or contracted a virus. -
My handwriting is atrocious and after a few days I can scarcely read it myself, so even though I often initially write my journal entries by hand, I copy them to a computer file for permanent storage. This also gives me a chance to review what I experienced a few days after the fact. Then I back up the file to another drive so I don't have to worry about losing it. You can get plenty of free storage for documents online, so you don't have to pay for a second storage drive. I bet if you have a teacher or mentor who periodically reviews your journal, he or she would appreciate a computer file
Everyone is different, but personally I don't find that writing by hand adds clarity of thought; to the contrary, it just makes my hand hurt and inclines me to be brief (not the same thing as "economy of words") and use lots of abbreviations. I bet Crowley's diaries would be less cryptic if he'd had a word processor. -
"I bet Crowley's diaries would be less cryptic if he'd had a word processor."
Possibly. But then he might have shared Oscar Wilde's fate.
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I have been writing a diary since I was in third grade (of course, the style has changed over time
). I write by hand and find it simpler than using the computer for that purpose. when you use computer for diary, you depend on the machine and the electricity, when you use just paper and pen - you can improvise in many ways; you can write even in the dark, on canvas, wall etc - with whatever you got for the pen-purpose...
... and if you give it a long-term look - you'll always need some device to read your computer-made entry, while you need only your eyes for the paper entry. -
I recommend you try Pen (nib) and Ink on Quality Paper.
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I used to do it by hand but then switched to computer. By hand has a certain nice feel to it but after awhile, unless you write some cliff notes for your journals, then you aren't going to know where things are for reference. So, I essentially use the computer for organizational purposes. That and a few hundred kilobyte files takes up a lot less space than a dozen books.