It’s November and this is my first Indian Summer in New England, even though it’s my second year. The last time was freezing cold, but this year we can sit here with the windows open and it’s too bizarre to be true. It is raining, though. I should add that. What better time to sit down and write?
When I started with this blog, I wasn’t really sure what to do with it – use it as an online-diary or as a re-blog blog where I post and comment on stuff I come across on the internet. It turned out to be something of both and there was one period a few months ago when most of the posts fell into the “Dude Check This out!”-Category, and I wasn’t too happy with that. So now it moved back to something of a mixed format with more personal things and posts on topics that interest me. My “Dude Check This out!” material ends up in my Tumblr, so it’s not gone, just – diverted. And the original reason I started to write a blog in the first place was to keep in touch with friends after I moved to another continent and it kinda took off from that.
However, I have been thinking about the entire diary-shtick lately. I have kept a diary – more or less – since I was in my teens. Once I started blogging, more of that stuff ended up in blog posts than on paper, but I still try to keep my diary ‘active’. With mixed results. So I checked out two new websites that cater to your diary-keeping needs. The first one, Diary.com, is basically a private tumblr-blog, which lets you add entries and post stuff you come across on the internet via a bookmarklet. The website’s design is pretty neat and intuitive, but I still feel somewhat reluctant to put this stuff online, where it feels much more out of my hands than an actual paper diary. I also don’t carry my laptop around with me everywhere I go, which is something I can do with a pocket book. So the pen-and-paper version wins.
I’m totally sold on the second one, Memiary, though. Even though I don’t own an iPhone or iPod, I’m a total sucker for the minimalist websites designed for iPhone use, like Instapaper, for example, and Memiary fits right into that mold. It let’s you add five things you did today, to a maximum of 160 letters/entry. It’s extremely easy and intuitive to use and I can’t wait to check back in a few months from now what I’ve done today. Granted, it is a toy, but the notion of a minimalist diary like that has it’s charm. And it’s also an experiment in diary-keeping, at least for me. Maybe the majority of people keep their daily dairy entries in the five-bullet-point-format and I haven’t noticed. If so, my bad. I’m old.
If not, however, give it a whirl. I think the restrictive frame of Memiary forces you to condense your daily adventures to the bare essentials and write them down. Which might be fun. And for the longer entries, you’ll still have your paper diary, or, in case you feel comfortable keeping them in the cloud, your blog or services like Diary.com.
Filed under: Blogging, Life , Blogging, diary, Diary.com, Instapaper, Memiary, minimalist, online, web, websites
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