Keeping a Digital Diary

I’ve been keeping a personal diary for over twelve years now. People always say “personal diary,” but really, isn’t every diary personal? Is there even such a thing as a public diary? Sounds silly.

Anyway, back to my Diary ...

In fact, it's more than twelve years ago. First, I started with real paper diarys. Actually writing in a notebook. Using a Moleskine and later a Leuchtturn1917 paper notebook and spending time trying different pens, pencils to use.

This was a period that was quite interesting for me, and I even spent time writing on my old and no longer available WordPress blog, about the paper quality, the different pens, fountain pens, biros, or pencils that I used

But I finally gave all that up, as:

I write like my doctor, it's unreadable, and I find myself going back days or weeks later to add things, and with a paper diary, this makes a big mess
Also, one of the main interests for me in keeping a diary was being able to jump in and look for a certain detail, when did I ride with so and so ?, when did I have that appointment with my doctor? Or see so and so? None of this can be done with a paper diary, but with a digital version, this can be done.
So I started using a diary in a digital version. Decided straight away to use an app on my Android phone, not on my PC. I used basically two apps seriously before finishing with, and still using a third one, Diarium. The two apps before were Diaro in 2013 and Journey in 2014 for almost nine years. I started Diarium in 2023.
I like to think that maybe one day, when I'm no longer in this world, my boys will like to read through my dribbling personal thoughts, but that's probably just a dream. At least with a clean written diary, they can if they so desire. With the paper ones, that's not possible. I just tried reading a paper page from about thirteen years ago, and I can't even read it myself.

Neither Diaro nor Journey were bad apps. I'm not criticising them, in fact, as I said, I used Journey for around nine years. The only real reason I changed was that I wanted my data somewhere other than proprietary storage, and Diarium gave me the choice of storing it on my Google Drive or my Nextcloud server, backups to my HDD plus other options that I liked and needed, especially linking my Strava account to it (this is just brilliant as I'm an avid sportsperson), my Google Timeline, Tags for thing I do, a Crossfit session, A bike ride, many more options weren't available on the previous apps. Plus, for instance, a one-time purchase rather than every year.

It has so many options, Diarium, most I never use

One feature that I use almost every day is the "On This Day". I saw what I was doing, for instance, today, but on October 6th 2014. I went riding on my MTB while being at Fréjus, in the south of France. For me, that's essential, keeping my fading memories active (since losing my hearing, my memories are not so good), linked to my hearing loss, or just old age? probably both, but it relives the memories, so that's nice and useful.

So anyway, I write every day, sometimes a couple of lines, sometimes a complete page. "Today I received a delivery from Lego. Tonight I'm invited to a dinner party with so and so. I've still got a slight cold. Had a blood test today, Cholesterol was high at 2.54". Mostly personal details. However, I find it very useful when searching for specific details in the past, often in fact.

TIP: Add complete names in your Diary, e.g., 'went riding with Tony.' 10 years later, if you are like me. Who's Tony or which Tony ???

Diarium is, to me, the best digital diary around. In all, Diarium just stands out from the crowd. Available on Android and iOS. I certainly won't be changing it.

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