I started free writing again a couple weeks ago, but this time I’m doing it digitally, using the AlphaSmart Neo 2.

I dove hard into “Morning Pages” after reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, but it didn’t last long. I mean, c’mon, there’s no way I can consistently write 3 lined pages, longhand, every morning.

Reading Jeremy’s post about keeping his personal journal helped clarify some of the thoughts I’ve been having about mine.

Some Entries from My Personal Journal:

On Tuesday the 12th of November, 2024, I started what I hoped to be a new habit. That is writing a personal daily journal. Over the weeks, I expanded my aspirations to include a daily check list of activities I wanted to do.

I’ve been consistently keeping a personal journal for years. I write primarily using Org-journal, a Daybook.org file, and a paper notebook. My problem isn’t that I don’t journal enough, but rather that I can’t decide where to journal. 

I keep a lot of files in a lot of folders, but I’m inconsistent in how I organize them. This means I too frequently have trouble finding things, so I’ve made another attempt at fixing the problem.

I’ve tried all the popular “systems”. From PARA to ACCESS to Johnny Decimal, but everything has felt either too prescriptive or too loose. And they all felt like I was living in someone else’s space. I don’t want to memorize or check the “rulebook” to figure out where I should put something.

I still call this my “analog” desk. It’s for reading real books and articles. It’s for journaling. It’s for painting and drawing. It’s for sitting and staring out the window, even if the view is only that of a cul-de-sac in a boring middle-class suburb.

I sat here for a good portion of two days during a recent power outage. It was refreshing and mentally invigorating.

Long story short, I have successfully rationalized the purchase of a new iPad Pro and keyboard.

After a week or more of non-stop tinkering with nearly every bit of software on my Mac, I had a fit and decided to switch things up. I now have an iPad Pro (11-inch) with Smart Keyboard. The idea is that the software I use on iOS is less prone to tweaking. Plus, I’m not always futzing with shell aliases and other CLI tools just for fun. I’m not tempted by a 32-inch screen peppered with windows just begging me to play with them. I’m still thinking Reset to Defaults.

A week ago I did that thing where I blow up my system because I noticed I’d been doing that other thing where I spend all my time tweaking everything.

I’m calling it an experiment, and I’m naming it “Reset to Defaults”.

The idea is to revert to stock macOS apps where feasible, or simple and established apps otherwise, and avoid tools that lend themselves to constant tweaking. This hurts because tweaking is what I spend much of my time doing. I enjoy it! But, it’s a distraction and I should do less of it. To this end, I’ve restructured task management, blogging, journaling, note-taking, photo editing, file management, etc.