An exercise I began a little over a year ago has been an experiment I didn’t know I could stay with in a digital world. I keep a digital calendar so I can make edits, look far ahead for planning, and coordinate with family on schedules. A few years ago I tried to keep a small paper calendar on the side just to record my daily actions. More of a diary of record, though not completely a diary. It would serve more as a “what I did in this time period” record than a “look ahead” tool.
Last year I wanted to expand just a bit on that discipline, so I purchased a Moleskine calendar that allows me to put things in dates but also gives me a page to expand on the week if I like. It’s been a bit over a year in this exercise. I also keep a journal, by the way. It’s not exactly a tracking of daily thoughts as it is to flesh out what I am thinking, what I am reading or studying, etc. (I have dozens of those notebooks that are totally unreadable and will probably only serve as yet another thing for my boys to toss out quickly when I’m gone. But, I’ll leave that for them.)
The recording of my week through the Moleskine calendar has turned into a fun exercise. It is fun to look back on a physical page and see what was going on at the time. It’s not exact. There are weeks with hardly anything down. Other weeks where both sides of the page are full.
I’ve enjoyed tracking the journey in a way that is physical and not just digital.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 