Issues of keeping a journal

[citygirl1961]

Does anyone here keep a journal, if so is it paper or electronic, do you have privacy concerns and do you keep more than one journal or diary? I keep a visual diary which is more like a scrapbook which I love keeping, I keep appointments on my phone and a journal for recording deep feelings and frustrations, this is on paper like the visual dairy. With the journal though I do worry about privacy even though I live alone. I have destroyed previous journals and regretted it but there's always that "what if" someone close to me sees it and gets offended by anything I've written in the heat of the moment. I don't know how to get round this as journaling does help me.

Sorry, no answer, but can relate ... I also have the dread of ' what if I die & everyone reads it?!

Well if you are dead and someone reads your diary you are not going to know are you? You have to ask the question why are you writing it if it causes you such anguish.
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I do. These days it's all over the place - much of it on here, bookmarked, much also in other online support places, numerous notebooks and bits of paper and random files on various digital memories. I used to keep my journals 'properly' - in books, consecutively - but my partners read & used them against me, as did other people at odd times. I destroyed all the old ones. I think I'll regret this as, if I ever get around to telling the interesting bits of my life story, all my most personal records have gone (I ditched photos & memory boxes too.)

The primary purpose of my journals, though, is the benefit in the act of writing them. From this point of view alone, I don't need them stored for more than a few months. I'm about to clear out all the old paper; journals will go with it.

I think that, if yours are for your older self to read, it's a good idea to store them directly on a big corporate server somewhere far away. You could either use an online blogging tool, with careful privacy management, or upload your stuff to something like a no-visibility, password protected Dropbox folder and delete them from your device. A physical alternative would be a safe deposit with a bank or solicitor - or you could just keep them in locked boxes at home, and refuse to open them for anyone!

I'm sure it's daft to worry overmuch about this ... but, well, it's horrid when other people read 'the inside of your head' without asking, and I wish virtual filing had been available to me back then.

If you want to write privately you can write just the first letter of each word. It does mean you can;t reread it but for very private things I do this sometimes.

I know what you mean.
I enjoy putting pen to paper so have not created an electronic journal not counting my MN postings.
My journal was filled with endless ventings about my toxic sister. Page after page...then I realized just about the whole journal was a toxic waste dump about her and was horrified that she might one day come across it. So I cut the offensive essays out and shredded them. That was around the time I discovered mumsnet so I relieved my burden here and eventually went no contact with sister (and do not fear her anymore either).

I do not journal nearly so much these days, except when exposed to the ils.
I have a small book and use a very fine point micron pen. Working from the example set by Jane Austen in writing overlap perpendicular to maximize use of paper, I write as small as possible, two lines fit into the printed paper lines-the first right side up down the page- then turn the book so the next pass the lines appear upside down, bottom to top. Or switch back and forth at random intervals.

Another thing I have done is write as small as possible again but in swirls or other echoing patterns that would be hard to follow even if one enlarged the page a thousand percent. Cursive, in many different styles/slants, alternating with print in many different styles. It makes it extraordinarily difficult to read (even when I wrote it myself).

If someone trys for a quick peek they won't get any satisfaction. They would have to steal the journal and put forth considerable time and effort to read it...at that point they pretty much deserve any offense they might find.

Thanks for your replies. I only write in my journal when I need to offload. Some things are ok being written in there but I am wary of writing certain things and I can't seem to find a place for that. In my visual diary I write a daily account of things I've done and may just write in brief about my feelings but not go into detail. I do find these diaries good to look back on, whereas the journals I threw out I did find reading them long winded which makes me think maybe I just need that type of journal to process my feelings and not necessarily keep but when I'm writing them it helps me more if I feel they are permanent. I can go for weeks without journalling but when the need hits me then I have to do it and the process is so comforting. I need to write longhand and not in code. But then sometimes later when things have calmed down I regret what I have written. I am all for digital but for journals I prefer to hand write.

I find that when I start a journal, I want to write a page every day and then I forget about it for a week, or two weeks, or it gets moved and tidied away an then I find it, years later, a beautiful book with maybe a dozen pages written on.

So this year, I started writing an entry every month. If I have something on my mind, I write that separately, but at the end of each month, I lost important facts such as what I'm reading about, who I have a crush on, what ambitions I have, which friends I've seen etc.

Luckily, I live by myself with DS and so don't have the risk of being discovered. They'd think I'm a lunatic though - I have some very odd crushes!