Diary of Boring Things

Inspiration to start a mundane journaling habit.

Getting inspired

I love reading history, biographies in particular. When reading a biograpgy I often find myself taken aback at how much self-documenting these historical figures had time to do. Now, I understand that before the internet, and well… much of modernity, there simply wasn’t as much stuff to occupy ones time. And perhaps it’s reasonable to expect that the diary entries of yesteryear will be replaced by the email correspondence, tweets, blog posts, and innumerable digital artifacts that spew from the lives of today’s important figures.

My favorite thing about these historical diaries is that they are remarkably boring. For every momentous entry there seem to be 10 or even 100 “Good weather for plowing today”. Truly mundane stuff, and yet it reveals just how critical a part the rhythm of journaling plays when it comes to drawing any substance out of the habit.

There is a 3rd category of entries that give me hope on my quest to be a habitual journaler. These are the ones that seem like mere humdrum at the time, but end up providing crucial context for important events/timelines/decisions after the fact.

Getting started

For a while I had been feeling like I should start journaling. Then I was gifted a Fisher Space Pen (this is not an affiliate link, I just like the pen!) and a perfect size leather-bound journal at Christmas. And so my journaling career began.

3 months in

Journaling has been a net positive. It helps me clarify thoughts, and convert memories/emotions/thoughts to a sort of “cold storage”, when they might otherwise get evicted from a LRU “hot path” cache.

However — I don’t think I’ve quite reached “peak boring” in my entries. I find myself more likely to journal to make “reactionary” entries… where I write because I’m inspired to by something that happened. Progress for sure, but as I’ve observed in the great diaries of history, a wider net can yield some delightful yet unexpected treasures.

More boring

My goal is to get better at journaling even when nothing spurs me to do so. In fact, I think the mundane days are the ones most likely to benefit from a bit of reflection. It’s easy to think that I know when the important stuff is happening, but I think that strengthening my boring-journal muscle can help recalibrate my relevancy meter to a broader arc of importance… and that seems like wisdom.