Posted on 08/26/2021 3:53:26 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
"Many years ago, I tossed most of my old journals into the recycle bin except for two that a good friend convinced me to keep; one was entries that I was painfully required to write for 15 minutes daily during a year of living and working with Americorps in the Six Rivers National Forest of Northern California, and academic notes & drawings from a related Fisheries class.
In that year my crew and I hiked hundreds of miles with heavy tools through mystical redwood forests to cut trail for scientists to do research and campers to enjoy the outdoors, and waded through fast-flowing rivers in the rain wearing rubber pants to build fish habitats and save the salmon. I was part of an eclectic crew of city misfits and college preppies performing the most challenging physical labor of our lives. It was also the most rewarding experience of my life. Born and raised in the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, it was my introduction to beautiful rainforest and mother nature. It was a pivotal point in my life toward environmentalism and natural resource conservation.
I’m grateful that my friend convinced me to keep these two journals. I’m glad to have tossed all the others. I cannot recall what was in them. Out of sight, out of mind.
Do you stow or throw away your journals immediately after they’re full of writing? Have your habits changed over the years?"
(Excerpt) Read more at bellaorganizing.com ...
Ask Brett Kavanaugh his opinion :).
Incidentally, we’re doing a big purge of old stuff and I just threw out many years of old Franklin Planner pages. Odds are I will never, ever go back to them unless I decide to run for SCOTUS some day..
I tossed out 20 years of training journals from when I was racing two years ago.
I’d literally drug those notebooks to China and back.
I save my journals - at most two per year - in a box at the top of my closet. When I can’t hold a pencil any longer, I’ll donate them to a university. Students could write masters’ theses on my shopping lists and church committee notes.
I’d keep them. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday so I love it when my memory is jostled by an old diary entry. I’ve only kept one sporadically over the years, but now I wish I’d written more often to document the highs & lows of my life.
I’ve got bins of burned data discs that haven’t been looked at since they were made.
Sooner or later I will have them crushed.
They’re not just a ‘day in the life of...’ they’re a day/week/month/year(s) in YOUR life - so yes, keep them - but digitize them. I.e., scan them in to an Adobe PDF - will keep little space and read anywhere. This way, before you become like Biden, you’ll be able to reminisce, if you so choose.
I’d like to ask my sisters for my dad’s sermon notes - would love to read many years now after he’s gone.
Think of Reagan - all his notes he wrote in his journals. It made fascinating reading to know the man’s thinking at the time.
TOSS THOSE SUCKERS. (Better yet, don’t keep a journal in the first place.)
Yes it is.
How much would you like to pass on to society, your kids or grand kids.
Pretend you are the government and black out what you don’t want to pass on.
Put them shiny side up in a microwave for two seconds.
I’d be zapping for about a day.
The UPS store offers a destruction bin pretty cheap per pound. Every so often the county has a free destruction day.
It’s mostly a motivational thing.
I could use the containers they are in more.
90 percent aren’t labeled anyway. I can guess sort of by the disc brand when and what they might have. Most are copies of copies.
I’m saving my
Signed group photo
of Scott Brayton.
Every other sheet of paper
is about to be recycled.
“I’d keep them. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday so I love it when my memory is jostled by an old diary entry.”
Have my diaries from middle school and high school. Love that I still have them.
Got my 1st computer in 89. Printed stuff out I found interesting (i.e. My Grandparent’s immigration records.)
Threw those out thinking they will always be on the net. No, they’re not.
She should have never thrown the others away. Worst case she should have secured them in something relatively water/airtight and buried them somewhere.
20, 50, 200, 1000 years later someone would find them and they would provide hours of fascinating insight into someone long gone. To have casually tossed a declining hard storage medium that contained a fairly detailed layout of a portion of an individuals existence in the past was to throw away a small scrap of informational immortality that few create or preserve...
At this point the majority of collected personal and social information is collected and stored digitally. At some point ALL of that will become irretrievable given some catastrophe or just an expansion/evolution of media outside the then current storage and retrieval technology. Anyone here still have the capability to read the information off a 3.5 inch floppy disk? How about a 5 inch? An 8? A cassette tape? 8 Track? Reel to Reel?
Additionally, the people who control the means to read/recover the information and store it will be the people who interpret it for others...
I’d keep them. A grandchild might use them to write a book.
Digitize (scan) and then transcribe (in the case of handwritten notes: type by hand; in the case of already-typewritten notes: use Optical Character Recognition software) all of your journals.
You will now have a Microsoft Word file of your journal.
It is then fun to cross-reference your file with all of your likewise scanned grocery store receipts, movie theatre receipts, photos, etc.
Regards,
20, 50, 200, 1000 years later someone would find them and they would provide hours of fascinating insight into someone long gone.
When deliberating on whether you want to destroy any of your old records, just imagine that they are the records of your great-great-grandmother. Would you wish that your great-great-grandmother had destroyed that journal entry describing (in loving detail) the big family reunion in 1872?
Side note: Folks, please don't take a photo of yourself and your bowling buddies and write on the back, "Me and my buddies!"
Instead, write the date and the names of all the persons depicted. Also: Write a short description of the circumstances of the photo (e.g.: "This was taken out behind the bowling alley just after the league semi-finals; that bruise under my left eye was because...").
Your great-great-grandchildren will thank you!
Regards,
20, 50, 200, 1000 years later someone would find them and they would provide hours of fascinating insight into someone long gone.
When deliberating on whether you want to destroy any of your old records, just imagine that they are the records of your great-great-grandmother. Would you wish that your great-great-grandmother had destroyed that journal entry describing (in loving detail) the big family reunion in 1872?
Side note: Folks, please don't take a photo of yourself and your bowling buddies and write on the back, "Me and my buddies!"
Instead, write the date and the names of all the persons depicted. Also: Write a short description of the circumstances of the photo (e.g.: "This was taken out behind the bowling alley just after the league semi-finals; that bruise under my left eye was because...").
Your great-great-grandchildren will thank you!
Regards,
Bookmark
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