Recently, I've been toying with the idea of starting a journal. A physical journal using an old-school notebook. It's a trend I've been noticing and getting on youtube, a sort of therapy for doomscrolling and brainrot. I don't consider myself a chronic doomscroller, and I keep myself from consuming any brainrotting content. Still, I found the idea quite interesting. I'd already been interested in journaling for a while. I had read about bullet journals, nature journaling, and I also got inspired by my partner's recipe notebook, which she has filled up very nicely with all the tasty things she makes for us. I already started filling a notebook with recipes for ferments and I also wanted to use it as a registry of the ferments I've made. I've meant to fill it up with general "homesteading" information, such as the plans for the chicken run and the pond, and, idk, stuff like that. But I haven't been at all consistent with it.
Part of the intention of doing "analog journaling" is also in trying to stay away from screens for a little while. To have a physical thing, one that isn't a screen, that I can tend to, and in which I focus for a little while. It is not that I am too screen addicted. I've been reducing my screen usage recently, but I still sometimes need something to keep me away from it, as there are times where I do find myself looking for something to watch on youtube (and not finding much of interest). It doesn't help that my language study sessions are entirely on the screen, and that I also have all my books there as well.
One of the journals that I am starting is, in fact, focused on language practice. It's the "Chinese Journal", where I will try to remedy the apparently extremely common situation of "I can understand chinese but cannot speak it" that learners face at some point. I keep getting videos, one after another, that bear the same title, such as "Why you can understand chinese but not speak it and what to do about it". These kinds of things always irritate me somewhat. I can't tell why, but it has to do with it being such a silly problem to have and one that is straightforward to remedy. While this is one thing that does affect me somewhat, mostly due to my neglect in practicing the language and focusing instead on comprehension and vocabulary, a bigger problem that I face (and apparently, many chinese natives are also experiencing), is that I keep forgetting how to write some, often very common characters. I can recognize them when I read them, but if I have to write many of them, I forget altogether!
The plan is simple: I'll begin writing simple phrases, you know, stuff like 我是墨西哥人，在墨西哥城住了25年差不多，我很喜歡學習語言, and so on, gradually increasing the complexity of the sentences and looking up vocabulary for the kinds of things that I want to talk about, and also practicing the use of sentence patterns such as 因為...所以， and the like. This way, I get to practice writing characters and expressing myself in chinese. A double win, and I can integrate this in my daily study sessions.
Anyway, the other journal will be my main life journal, where I talk about the things that I often find myself wanting to talk about on the pub, but I don't because they are too mundante. Stuff such as my plans for the crop or the chickens, hopes and expectations, the kinds of things I would like to do but not necessarily will do, and so on.
And in fact, just before writing this entry, I did one on each of the two journals that I just described. This is, in a way, a "third journal", where I can write less frequently, and where I update on more significant events, such as starting a diary or two.
I guess one could say I have 3 journals... perhaps even 4, if we count the recipe notebook, which I guess I can start updating more frequently now that I have better defined it's purpose.
That's all for the time being, hopefully, soon, I'll continue to write against everything, as my mind is still swirling with thoughts to dismantle euro-imperialist thought, thoughts that, I believe, need to be expressed publicly.
I also have a brief critique of Cantor's diagonal argument that I need to get out of my chest, hopefully soon.