I noticed while reading through blogs that alot of people also keep their own personal journal. I wondered how common this is. Do you keep a blog AND a journal? Do you find it easy to keep up with? Do you also email or write to individual family members and friends?
I'm worried that I won't be able to keep up with just a blog while travelling never mind a journal as well.
Whats you thoughts?
Reply to this Hi Tina
I keep a week to view diary with me when I'm away and I only write down brief bullet points in it to remind me what I did every day, this takes about 5 mins to fill in each day maximum. I have a memory like a sieve so this is really handy when I'm writing my blog or need to look back where I was a few days ago! My blog is my detailed diary though as far as I'm concerned and where I'll look in a few years time for a reminder of my trips. I email and skype family and friends with anecdotes and exciting news as it happens, also with more personal things that happen that I wouldn't want to write about on a public blog.
I know a few people that have started writing a detailed journal while they're away and now find it a real chore. If it's going to stop you enjoying the moment then it's not worth it I don't think. But everyone's got their personal way of doing things so just go with what best suits you!
Reply to this Hi Tina
We (well I!) did both journal & blog. I kept my journal up to date every day without fail except for the last few days. There were loads of reasons I wanted to do both but mainly...
I could put all my personal thoughts on the country into my journal
I could keep a record every day in my journal on what we did.. which I used to refer to when I did the blog
I put lots of 'bits' in my journal like tickets etc.. I always like having things to touch & hold to remind me!
I also used my daily journal to remember what our photos were of
It was time consuming to do both.. definatley if I had missed a few days. I tended to write a lot too so I had lots of details on each country.. smells, sights, thoughts, people etc so when I look back I remember loads more than I would with just photos or the blog.
I enjoyed doign the journal but toally agree with Frankwah that if you don't enjoy doing it then there's no point in doing it.. you'll only remember how annoying it was when you read it back and no one wants that.
We did of course email family & friends but mainly to catch up on gossip.. they'd already read most of what we did on the blog so we could just talk about more personal stuff when we got to catch up with them.
Reply to this I'm tending to blog 'after the fact' these days - I still haven't caught up with my time in Japan, and I moved back a year ago!
For me, making short notes on a place is useful for being able to later recall things that were significant at the time, but because I put more time into a blog entry I often revert to quick emails for the sake of keeping in touch and letting people know everything is ok.
Reply to this I make a few notes in a journal each day and then use that to create a blog entry whenever I get the chance.
Reply to this I keep a daily written journal while I travel. I write into it everyday around dinner time, not just before I go to bed. Blogs of my travels are usually completed when I get home.
Reply to this I'm lucky in that together Faye and I do both... I blog, whereas Faye Writes a written journal everyday.
Faye's journal is a lot more personal, with everything she felt about a place written down as well as every scrap that she can get hold of stuck in (tickets, leaflets, flyers, business cards, restaurant napkins... literally everything that reminds her of something goes in). She writes it religiously everyday and although time consuming she loves it. I use it every now and again when writing a blog more to get everything in order rather than details as I've got a quite a good memory for that sort of thing.
Honestly, Fayes journal makes for a much more fascinating read than my blog, but I think that's because I know her so well and was standing right beside her while she was experiencing the things she's writing about.
I'm using them now to retrospectively write the blogs I missed and they really do evoke some powerful emotions about the places we visited, expecially as I now only have one left and that's
India, a place we have really mixed feelings about!
I say give it a try, but don't beat yourself up if you miss days/weeks/months out... if you stop enjoying it definately stop, cause then it'll just become a chore and you're supposed to be 'having the time of your life'! 😊
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We do both journal and blog.
I've done the journal for the past 18 years and the blog for about 3. Our blog tries to set the look and feel of a place and the adventures we had. Often time sharing details about wonderful people that we ran into.
The journal encompasses much of that but also has more mundane details, names of restaurants, sometimes the prices of items and on occasion the emotions. I make notes on a calender and update the journal at the end of the month. I found that if I wrote daily or weekly that I included too many details that didn't mean anything to me later. When I write at the end of the month I have my daily notes as reminder from the calendar but I seem to include only the things that are meaningful by month end. it seems to work.
We write the blog together. One of us will get it started. The other edits and adds to it. We go back and forth until we both like the finished copy.
Reply to this I've written a journal for my holidays, trips and travels since I was a kid and despite threatening to stop now we are blogging, I still cant quite manage to. I wish I'd kept some of those early journals, seeing a place from a my perspective as a child compared to going back there again now would be pretty interesting. Even just reading what I thought worth recording back then...
Like many people here, I stick tickets, business cards, leaflets, whatever we get into my journal, and spend far too long writing it. Then far too long reading through while writing our blogs. The work is very unevenly distributed between us, I journal and blog! And then I'm generally the one sifting through tons of photos and trying to label them all. I start with good intentions - no full sentences, just notes about what we saw and did and how we felt. But usually fail quickly. A couple of times recently we've travelled with a small laptop and I considered just journalling in open office each night so I could cut & paste into the blog, but I was left with a pile of tickets and no-where to put them (you only need so many bookmarks!)
Old habits die hard, so i expect I'll be journalling and blogging for a while yet ;o)
Reply to this I'm so glad I found this thread because I'm in the same position as Tina. I really want to be able to keep a record of my experiences when I head off on my RTW on 3rd January 2011.
I've set up a blog on this site but I haven't yet posted any entries. I think I'm going to take a journal with me for those private and personal moments that don't belong in the public domain.
Does anyone have experience of using a private blog on this site? I'm thinking that this may be another way of writing about the prvate and personal things, without worrying that friends and family at home can see them?
Reply to this Whether you hand write a journal or type up each night in your choice of word processing software, only blog what you want people to read. If its personal and private, as Dave and Merry Jo say, dont put it online. Probably one of the reasons we still journal and blog. And you'll always have your journal as a back up. Plus we also use the back of our jounral to make notes - places people recommend, bus times, new friends email addresses, cribbage scores, new words in a new language...
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