I enjoy decluttering (throwing away old useless shit). But I ran into a roadblock with my journals. Although all my writing is now electronic, I have sat on a pile of physical journals and notepads spanning about a decade.
The pointlessness of it is obvious. I store them in boxes for many months. During moves I pack them up and pay in time, money and effort to transport them. Then they remain in those boxes, unused, for many more months until the next move.
But I recently came across Google’s PhotoScan app and saw a way out. When I found that this app sucked, I turned instead to Microsoft’s Office Lens. This app allows you to scan in high resolution by aligning the screen with all four corners of the page. This is ideal for glossy paper such as photographs. You can also do a quick low-resolution photo with a flash, which is much faster and is optimal for regular paper journal pages.
Although I struggled to start, I am now about a third of the way through my old journals. I have broken this project down into three parts:
- Scan each page.
- Check that the scans arrived correctly in my OneDrive folder.
- Throw away the journal for good!
Getting rid of this dead weight feels great. If I ever actually want to re-read those journals, I know where to find them.
If I run out of patience, I can always just throw these journals away without even scanning them. Mightn’t that be a little drastic? Well, no. Consider the following: the journals have already done their job. They were there for me when I needed introspection, thought and interpretation of what was going on in my life. They provided a place to record my thoughts, an activity where I could slow down and deliberately process many new places and events.
Much of my journaling was in special locations such as under an oak tree at the very far end of a nature preserve or inside a tent or on a train. Many entries included not just the time and date but also the place. Journaling there helped weave the place into my memory. The point of the journal has already been served. So throwing it away with no possibility of revisiting it is not necessarily a loss.
Whether scanning or simply tossing, shedding these old journals feels great!
pseudoisaac 