I haven't had the strength to write longform stuff on notebooks, although I actually used to do that—I draft (personal) blog entries on a Monocle notebook I got when I was a subscriber. What I do now is kind of journal on my planner—short vignettes, prone to the ink being smudged by my hand across the rest of the page.
Ironically, most of my writing remains online. My personal blog is turning twenty years in a couple of weeks. (Blogger, please do not go away.) What I regret losing are my early pieces when I wrote for a television website. It closed down. I wish I at least kept copies of my sixteen-week series of watching Lost for the first time, or my plea to Siobhan Magnus to scream less.
Sadly, the analog revival is very much imbued with issues of class and access. We are all taught to write—although the state of education these days, and its impact on reading comprehension, leaves a lot to be desired—but the act of archiving your life is being overshadowed by the *art* of archiving your life. Have the right planner, have the right pen, junk journal, scrapbook, Instagram the shit out of your journals, look like your life is better than every-fucking-one else...
Yeah, those vignettes + blogs still count as journaling! Whatever works for you. Ignore those who say otherwise 👍🏻 As I like to say, madaming "puro ngawa bago umunawa."
OMG ang dami kong gusto idagdag dito kanina about class and access! But publishing space, reader patience, and writing endurance are limited 😆 Better as separate newsletters IMO; there are so many topics/issues to pull from kasi.
I hate the financial burden, aesthetics, endless comparisons, and bragging of modern journaling. That's why I emphasized privacy, budget, and actual needs here. Plus there was a months-long case of bullying in the FPN-PH Facebook group, but I can't say anything there because pati mismong admins and/or their alta friends, nakisali 🤫
Archive everything you write! Or check if those online scrapers saved your work. I recovered some of my old articles on Muck Rack and the Internet Archive after former client websites shut down.
Hanapin ko nga sa Internet Archive. A lot of what I wrote is forgettable, to be honest, but I really credit me being assigned the American Idol beat with giving me confidence in writing about music—which has led to seven years of the old music blog, and two years and counting of the Once Monthly. If only to cringe at myself na rin, haha.
And no pressure, but that class and access thing is definitely something that should be a newsletter soon. Kung online nga ang dami nang barriers (diba, Substack?) bakit pati sa papel at bolpen?
As for barriers, I'm starting to think people are increasingly being gatekeeping pricks to others just because they can, and even over the simplest and dumbest of things. Basta maka-lamang, ano? 😞
I love that you’re journaling by hand again! I journaled a LOT in my 20s and 30s, in cursive, but have lost all those notebooks over several moves. I use a journal app now. It’s great you can look back to your old journals to see how much you’ve grown, even if things aren’t quite the way you remember them.
I feel sad over your lost notebooks! Then again, they've also served you well. Sometimes, that's enough 💗 And yes, I loved seeing growth in most instances. Although some were just "WTF?" 😆
What journal app do you use? Been looking into it, but I'm still on the fence about ownership and privacy
I recently hunted for all my notebooks, journals and planners. So far, I have 83 and counting, starting from when I was thirteen. Yes, there’s a lot of cringe, but they were so helpful in reconstructing my memories when writing my memoir. Was I really that childish/angry/mean/petty? In my read and critique group, an early comment was “Show us some emotion,” which was hard for me because I don’t consider myself an emotional person. Turns out, I was, but I wrote them down, forgot them, and moved on.
Good tip about archiving - I’ve downloaded and saved my Wordpress but still have to save my writing on Blogger.
83? That's an amazing trove, I hope to get there someday 😍 And they really come in handy as a fact-checker and resource!
My therapist told me it's easy to judge your old selves as that: childish, petty, etc. But we can only work with what we have at a particular moment, and that's what we had and what we were capable of. I was more forgiving of myself after that session. And I never considered that possibility - leaving all emotions on pages, then not showing any in your work. Thank you for that 💗
Muck Rack and the Internet Archive are good at archiving, though they don't always get everything or you have to dig sometimes. I also back up my laptop drive once a month and social media archives, once a year. Auto-downloads via IFTTT, Dropbox, and Nextcloud also save my social media photos/videos. Hope these help too! Will probably have too much data in the end, but better than none
Ahhh thank you for writing this, KC! Brought up so many memories to the surface, hehe. I remember being gifted with so many pretty notebooks once my family realized that I like to write. Ended up not using a lot of them because they were too pretty to be spoiled by my little stories and plots and poems. I still have a few though -- recycled school notebooks, mostly. I did get to keep a record of my Multiply years, and my Blogspot is still floating around online, but thank you for this reminder to archive. :)
You're welcome, Reg! 💗 I was the same, too - sabi ko dapat i-save for special occasions only. Nasayang lang in the end. We need to use all our notebooks now in adulthood 😄
Yesss archive everything and regularly, and make sure your hard drives don't have any viruses or bad sectors! If archiving online, do the usual account security measures
Coincidentally, I was telling a colleague today of the times I witnessed a newspaper columnist faxing a handwritten column on a yellow pad. This was back in the early 2000s. I also remember one famous Pinoy author who collects fountain pens still taking time to write on paper. When I was in J School, I wrote using the typewriter. 😁
Now that's old school! And yes, Butch Dalisay is revered in the FP community. He's big on vintage pens (like Parker Duofold) and accessories, and likes helping out younger collectors.
I miss seeing typewriters around! Typing on them, not so much. 😆
I haven't had the strength to write longform stuff on notebooks, although I actually used to do that—I draft (personal) blog entries on a Monocle notebook I got when I was a subscriber. What I do now is kind of journal on my planner—short vignettes, prone to the ink being smudged by my hand across the rest of the page.
Ironically, most of my writing remains online. My personal blog is turning twenty years in a couple of weeks. (Blogger, please do not go away.) What I regret losing are my early pieces when I wrote for a television website. It closed down. I wish I at least kept copies of my sixteen-week series of watching Lost for the first time, or my plea to Siobhan Magnus to scream less.
Sadly, the analog revival is very much imbued with issues of class and access. We are all taught to write—although the state of education these days, and its impact on reading comprehension, leaves a lot to be desired—but the act of archiving your life is being overshadowed by the *art* of archiving your life. Have the right planner, have the right pen, junk journal, scrapbook, Instagram the shit out of your journals, look like your life is better than every-fucking-one else...
...okay, I'll stop.
Yeah, those vignettes + blogs still count as journaling! Whatever works for you. Ignore those who say otherwise 👍🏻 As I like to say, madaming "puro ngawa bago umunawa."
OMG ang dami kong gusto idagdag dito kanina about class and access! But publishing space, reader patience, and writing endurance are limited 😆 Better as separate newsletters IMO; there are so many topics/issues to pull from kasi.
I hate the financial burden, aesthetics, endless comparisons, and bragging of modern journaling. That's why I emphasized privacy, budget, and actual needs here. Plus there was a months-long case of bullying in the FPN-PH Facebook group, but I can't say anything there because pati mismong admins and/or their alta friends, nakisali 🤫
Archive everything you write! Or check if those online scrapers saved your work. I recovered some of my old articles on Muck Rack and the Internet Archive after former client websites shut down.
Hanapin ko nga sa Internet Archive. A lot of what I wrote is forgettable, to be honest, but I really credit me being assigned the American Idol beat with giving me confidence in writing about music—which has led to seven years of the old music blog, and two years and counting of the Once Monthly. If only to cringe at myself na rin, haha.
And no pressure, but that class and access thing is definitely something that should be a newsletter soon. Kung online nga ang dami nang barriers (diba, Substack?) bakit pati sa papel at bolpen?
Adding to my long backlog 👍🏼
As for barriers, I'm starting to think people are increasingly being gatekeeping pricks to others just because they can, and even over the simplest and dumbest of things. Basta maka-lamang, ano? 😞
Perceptions and impressions talaga eh. Nauna ako, mas magaling ako sa’yo, nyeh nyeh nyeh.
My thoughts for my next playlist post (and my inevitable review of the next Bini EP) are going towards that direction, actually…
I love that you’re journaling by hand again! I journaled a LOT in my 20s and 30s, in cursive, but have lost all those notebooks over several moves. I use a journal app now. It’s great you can look back to your old journals to see how much you’ve grown, even if things aren’t quite the way you remember them.
I feel sad over your lost notebooks! Then again, they've also served you well. Sometimes, that's enough 💗 And yes, I loved seeing growth in most instances. Although some were just "WTF?" 😆
What journal app do you use? Been looking into it, but I'm still on the fence about ownership and privacy
It’s called Day One Journal.
Checking it out, thank you!
I recently hunted for all my notebooks, journals and planners. So far, I have 83 and counting, starting from when I was thirteen. Yes, there’s a lot of cringe, but they were so helpful in reconstructing my memories when writing my memoir. Was I really that childish/angry/mean/petty? In my read and critique group, an early comment was “Show us some emotion,” which was hard for me because I don’t consider myself an emotional person. Turns out, I was, but I wrote them down, forgot them, and moved on.
Good tip about archiving - I’ve downloaded and saved my Wordpress but still have to save my writing on Blogger.
83? That's an amazing trove, I hope to get there someday 😍 And they really come in handy as a fact-checker and resource!
My therapist told me it's easy to judge your old selves as that: childish, petty, etc. But we can only work with what we have at a particular moment, and that's what we had and what we were capable of. I was more forgiving of myself after that session. And I never considered that possibility - leaving all emotions on pages, then not showing any in your work. Thank you for that 💗
Muck Rack and the Internet Archive are good at archiving, though they don't always get everything or you have to dig sometimes. I also back up my laptop drive once a month and social media archives, once a year. Auto-downloads via IFTTT, Dropbox, and Nextcloud also save my social media photos/videos. Hope these help too! Will probably have too much data in the end, but better than none
I finally backed up my blogs! Thanks for this article!
I was tempted to edit some of them, but I resisted. It was who I was 10, 15 20 years ago.
Ahhh thank you for writing this, KC! Brought up so many memories to the surface, hehe. I remember being gifted with so many pretty notebooks once my family realized that I like to write. Ended up not using a lot of them because they were too pretty to be spoiled by my little stories and plots and poems. I still have a few though -- recycled school notebooks, mostly. I did get to keep a record of my Multiply years, and my Blogspot is still floating around online, but thank you for this reminder to archive. :)
You're welcome, Reg! 💗 I was the same, too - sabi ko dapat i-save for special occasions only. Nasayang lang in the end. We need to use all our notebooks now in adulthood 😄
Yesss archive everything and regularly, and make sure your hard drives don't have any viruses or bad sectors! If archiving online, do the usual account security measures
Coincidentally, I was telling a colleague today of the times I witnessed a newspaper columnist faxing a handwritten column on a yellow pad. This was back in the early 2000s. I also remember one famous Pinoy author who collects fountain pens still taking time to write on paper. When I was in J School, I wrote using the typewriter. 😁
Now that's old school! And yes, Butch Dalisay is revered in the FP community. He's big on vintage pens (like Parker Duofold) and accessories, and likes helping out younger collectors.
I miss seeing typewriters around! Typing on them, not so much. 😆
i've been away from substack exactly because of journaling. doon muna ko lol
So peaceful no? 💗 And whatever drama that's in there is self-made. Hahahaha
I missed you! And bitin kami sa Hajj story mo 😘