on capturing life

while i really like the idea of a journal or diary, i’ve never been very successful at it. i’m still not, but i’ve been using an online tool that has certainly helped and has shown me a benefit of journaling: http://ohlife.com/. each evening, i receive an email saying “how’d your day go?” and by replying to the email, i’ve added an entry to my online journal at ohlife. i like the reminder and the ease. sometimes i write a sentence, sometimes more, sometimes i delete it feeling like i’m too busy or my inbox is stressing me out. most times i don’t reply until the next day (who knows what’ll happen latter that night you’d want to write about!) and sometimes (though i don’t recommend it), i catch up on replying to several days worth of emails all at once.

here’s what i really love about this tool though. the “how’d your day go?” email always includes this: “remember this? one month ago you wrote… [along whatever you submitted that day]. the time machine varies, sometimes it’s a month ago, a week ago, a year ago, etc. i’ve even seen things like “800 days ago you wrote…”. pretty cool. but the part i love the most is that i am reminded of really great moments of life, that quickly get lost in the busyness and tedium of life. i’ve realized that often, no matter how meaningful a life moment might be, that it is so easy for it to get buried under layers and layers of other life, and then in many ways, lost. here’s a an example that arrived in my inbox recently that resurfaced the kind of thing i want to remember. to me, this is the real beauty of recording life in a journal.

Remember this? One month ago you wrote…

easy start to the morning everyone in the kitchen eating at roughly the same time. running some errands before our trip. after we got home, carter and I stood in the garage with the door open watching the rain and talking. it was clear it was a moment that I want to remember and cherish. carter was carrying some stuff in from the car and said, “I’m going to take this inside and then I’ll come back and we can talk some more.” 🙂 he’s already not that talkative at age 10, so this was a really great moment.