Paper or Electronic Journals

Yesterday was a long day. I got to the airport last night to catch my flight home only to discover it was delayed a half hour. The pilot did a good job making up some lost time but we still got in late. Then I had to take the shuttle bus to long-term parking so I could find my car. I think we circled the airport two or three times before we started dropping people off. I had been up since 5am and it was close to midnight before I got home.

I tried to be quiet as I came in the house so as not to wake anyone. The dog was kind enough to greet me with her silent tail in motion rather than her usual noisy bark. I quickly dropped off my laptop in my office and then headed off to bed.

Ever since December 16, 1987 I have kept a daily journal without missing a single day. I think I have written somewhere between eight and nine thousand pages. I don't have just one journal, I have a bookshelf full of them. So before going to bed, I sat down to write in my journal.

My wife was surprised I didn't write on the plane. Sometimes I will bring my journal with me on a day trip to San Francisco and write in it on the way home. I thought about doing that on this trip but I only have seven more pages to go before I start another volume and didn't want to run the risk of loosing six exciting months of my life.

So why don't I keep my journal on my computer? After all, I generally have my laptop with me on most trips. Wouldn't it be easier to type out a page every day instead of writing it by hand? Probably. However my experience with computers leads me not to trust them. I have lost too many things on the computer and so I use the method that has stood the test of time: writing in a book. I used to keep important papers on floppy disks. Now I don't have a single computer with a floppy drive. I have put important software code on CDROMs only to have them be unreadable now. I have stored priceless photographs on hard drives only to have the disk crash and the photographs lost forever.

If you look in my bookshelf, I have a first edition original copy of Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" pulished in 1984. I also have a journal compiled my one of my ancestors from the American Civil War. If I want to read them, I just have to open the book. I don't need to try to find a civil-war era device nor do I need to pull it of an old 8-inch floppy disk.

So if you want something you have written to last forever, make sure it is printed on paper and put someplace safe where it won't get lost. Otherwise it will get lost.