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Make sure it’s a bound journal so it can be called as evidence in court.”
As a young trainee, a senior advisor told me to have a bound notebook with numbered pages. Also to write something every day, even if it is just the weather.
Somewhere along the line, I started with Moleskine and have a drawer full of them. I have wanted to trash them since I retired, maybe I should hang on to them?
I used to keep a journal during the first few years I worked in NY State Corrections as a C.O. After that I stopped keeping them, and threw mine out years ago before I even retired in 2003.
Just remembered something about my father, and his keeping copies of all his reports. My Dad was a track foreman with the New York Central Railroad. Had worked for them for about 50 years. I can remember him every night sitting down after supper at the kitchen table, and making out his track reports for the work they did that day. He used to write everything down in a pocket notebook, then transfer the info onto these large yellow reports every night. He also made a carbon copy for himself of each and every report, and kept them in a safe place. After PennCentral took over NYCRR, there came a time when my father would use those copies. Apparently there had been a derailment on one of the tracks in my father’s work area, and the higher-ups were looking to blame my father and his crew for failing to repair a known problem on the line. They were claiming they didn’t have his reports for the repairs. My father was able to pull out all his copies of the reports he submitted, to show that he, and his crew had repaired that specific track not long before the derailment. After all those years they had tried to make my father, and his men the scapegoats. It didn’t work because he had the proof to show them. My Dad loved his job, but after this incident, we told him it was time for him to retire. He waited until he was 65, and then he put his pension papers in. Sadly, he died less than 7 years later.