233 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
233 lines
8.2 KiB
Markdown
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## History
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Over the course of my life, I've had on-and-off attempts at starting a journaling habit. Some were semi-successful, lasting around a month of daily writing. In the end though, I always broke down and let the habit deteriorate.
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Lately, I've tried a different approach to journaling that I'm hopeful about.
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Previously, if I were to write an entry I'd take the time to write a long entry that was well formatted. I was writing essays. I'm not sure why I did that, but it gave me the misconception that journaling was a chore, not a therapeutic exercise.
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With that revelation, I decided to take a new approach to journaling. Rather than block out times to write long, detailed recounts of my day, maybe I could make small rapid notes that were well organized. That way I'd still be able to read through my past entries cohesively, but writing the entries would be a lot more natural for me.
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I also decided to switch from physical paper journaling to files on my laptop. While there is a lovely aspect to paper that makes the experience different, I find that it makes me think harder about what I'm writing. Since it's a lot harder to go back and change pen-and-ink than it is to delete some letters on a laptop, I spend a lot more time stressing about what I write on paper. It's harder for me to get into a word-dump flow state.
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## The system
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My basic organization scheme is as follows:
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```plain
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|-- 2023/
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| |-- 08/
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| |-- 2023-08-27.txt
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| |-- 2023-08-28.txt
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| |-- 2023-08-29.txt
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| |-- 2023-08-30.txt
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| |-- 2023-08-31.txt
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| |-- 09/
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| |-- 2023-09-01.txt
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```
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The path for any given day would be `YEAR/MONTH/DATE.txt`.
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I find that this structure works well for me as everything is nicely grouped up, not too nested, and doesn't have much file-clutter.
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### Individual files
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Now, the structure of the files is good, but if I'm going to be making small, rapid additions over the course of the day the files should also be organized.
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To start out, each file has a small header that looks like this:
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```plain
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=============
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August 2023
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Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
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1 2 3 4 5
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12
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13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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20 21 22 23 24 25 26
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27 XX 29 30 31
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Monday
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=============
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```
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Enclosed in `=============` I put a small calendar for the month (with the current day replaced by `XX`), and the current day of the week.
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This small header keeps a nice common structure between the files, and is very aesthetic in my opinion. It ties files together, and looks good in the process.
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Now, for each individual entry, I put a small prefix with the time to keep them separate.
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It looks like this:
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```plain
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* At 10:18
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A quick note about a shower thought I just had.
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```
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When all tied together, it makes a surprisingly cohesive format. Something that I can read through later and understand what past me was thinking.
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Here's what a typical journal entry for a full day could look like:
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```plain
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=============
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August 2023
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Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
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1 2 3 4 5
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6 7 8 9 10 11 12
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13 14 15 16 17 18 19
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20 21 22 23 24 25 26
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XX 28 29 30 31
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Sunday
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=============
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* At 14:31
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If cats had opposable thumbs I could probably teach mine to play chess.
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* At 15:39
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Just getting back, going to get dinner at a resturant.They make eh food but
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good ice cream. I'm subtly trying to cut back on dairy though, so sadly I'll
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probably just get a sorbet or similar.
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* At 18:16
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I think maybe I'll write a blog article about this system. Or maybe I'll
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rewrite a project in Tcl, Perl, or closure- some language that I'm interested
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in learning.
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* At 22:17
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About to sign off for the night.
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I'm liking this journaling, it makes my brain wind down in a good way.
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Time to unpack, unwind, and get ready to sleep.
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```
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## Automation
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Like the lazy programmer I am, I quickly spotted an opportunity to abstract away the repetitive parts of this system.
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I spent an afternoon whipping up `journal.sh`, a small `zsh` script that can handle all the templating for me.
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I'll link the full script at the end of this post, but first I want to go over some snippets from it.
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```bash
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#setup header
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if [ ! -f "$file" ]; then
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mkdir -p $(dirname "$file") 2> /dev/null
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printf "%0.s=" {1..13} >> $file
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printf "\n" >> $file
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cal -h "$month" "$year" | sed "0,/$daynum/{s//XX/}" >> $file
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truncate -s -1 $file
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printf "\n$day\n" >> $file
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printf "%0.s=" {1..13} >> $file
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printf "\n" >> $file
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change_status="Created"
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fi
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if ! grep -xq "$nowtime" "$file"; then
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printf "\n* At $nowtime\n" >> $file
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fi
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$EDITOR $file
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```
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This is the section that does all the template heavy-lifting. First, it creates the file if it doesn't exist, then it uses `cal` and `sed` to generate a little calendar header with the current day marked.
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Then, it does a check with `grep` to see if `$nowtime` (the current hour:minute) is already on a line in the file. If it isn't it adds it.
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Then, it opens the file in your `$EDITOR`
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That's really all there is to it.
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`journal.sh` has a few tricks, however.
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GNU `date` has a `-d` flag that lets you describe a relative time. Something like `date +%m -d "last month"` will print the number for last month. `journal.sh` utilizes this feature as much as possible.
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This is how it sets all the needed date values:
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```bash
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nowtime=$(date "+%H:%M") || exit
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day=$(date "+%A" -d "$*") || exit
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daynum=$(date "+%e" -d "$*") || exit
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month=$(date "+%m" -d "$*") || exit
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year=$(date "+%Y" -d "$*") || exit
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date=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d" -d "$*") || exit
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date_path=$(date "+%Y/%m" -d "$*") || exit
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journal_prefix=~/journal
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file="$journal_prefix/$date_path/$date.txt"
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```
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The `-d "$*` will expand to all arguments passed to the script. That means I can do something like `./journal.sh yesterday` to open my entry from a day ago.
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### Git integration
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In the interest of keeping my entries safe, `journal.sh` will automatically save my work when I close the file.
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Here's the code for that:
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```bash
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printf "Save in git? [Y|n]: "
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read yn
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case $yn in
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Y|y| )
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git add "$file"
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git commit -S -m "$change_status entry for $date at $nowtime" -m "$(randomart.py --ascii "$file")"
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esac
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```
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First, I'll get prompted to save the file, and then it will add it and commit the file for me.
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I've added a few small features to this commit though. Firstly, using the `-S` flag will have git use PGP to sign all my journal entry commits. This just proves that I am the one who wrote them (or at least the one who added them to this git repository).
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Then, git will use [`randomart.py`](https://github.com/ansemjo/randomart) to generate a little piece of ascii art based off of the hash of my journal entry. This doesn't really add anything to the project, but I like it nonetheless. In the end, running `git log` looks something like this:
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```plain
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commit 81e10dd3c80d2f4e31c0d7049d8ca2ab1b0adc84 (HEAD -> main)
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Author: Shav Kinderlehrer <shav@trinket.icu>
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Date: Mon Aug 28 13:52:07 2023 -0400
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Edited entry for 2023-08-28 at 13:50
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/--[randomart.py]--\
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| .*. *... !! |
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| =~*|
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| . .=*|
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|. . ..=. . |
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| .%=% . |
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| *= %E== |
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| *===~_.= |
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| .%=.%~=!.* .|
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| .=.%~***.*= |
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\---[BLAKE2b/64]---/
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commit 51dde788717b34ca86e45fa32c5c59eb946b739e
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Author: Shav Kinderlehrer <shav@trinket.icu>
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Date: Mon Aug 28 10:56:38 2023 -0400
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Edited entry for 2023-08-28 at 10:50
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/--[randomart.py]--\
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| *!..R* *. |
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| =%.=%* .= . |
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| . . =. .. =.. |
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| .* ==.. .==**.|
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|. . %==. **R= .|
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| . . .=% .~.. |
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| ... ..*. **. |
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| =*.*%. |
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| *=*=.**... |
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\---[BLAKE2b/64]---/
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```
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## That's all folks!
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This new method has been working really well for me so far, I'm really hopeful that this is endgame for me, and I can really make the habit stick.
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### One last note
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As a small personal challenge, I've been trying to keep all my entries to a strict maximum width of 80 characters. I find that this looks better, and is easier to read.
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[Here's a link to `journal.sh`](https://git.trinket.icu/scripts.git/tree/journal.sh)
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[If you prefer the raw file for curl](https://git.trinket.icu/scripts.git/plain/journal.sh)
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