How and Why I Journal

joegibbs

-4 points on this submission? What? How did that happen? I've never seen it go negative.

donohoe

Just posting to be part of this historical record.

commanderj

I have been here at - 1

nomilk

Not sure why, but when I clicked on 'A HN post with negative points – how?' from the HN home page it led to the post we're currently on ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48104663 ), but I think it should have led here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48106316 A bug!?

gosub100

Long-tail deviation from added random noise?

throwanem

"What an embarrassing website! It has just about run its course, hasn't it?"

signorovitch

Responding to the actual content of the post… :P Starting a long term commitment like journaling isn’t that hard. Just write something. There are a million apps and special notebooks to make it as easy as possible. I often hear people say staring is easy, maintaining is hard. Maintaining is also easy. Journaling doesn’t get harder with time. We often just underestimate how little your future self will care or value the same things current you does. It’s true that life gets in the way or a busy period will knock you out of your new habits. But starting again is still easy. Maintaining a journaling practice for a long time isn’t really that hard, it’s just hard to keep caring.

dailywriterguy

well, maybe you found the antidote to society's ills. Journaling. Writing stuff down helps me remember the good times and that the bad times don't last. It shows growth, from the way I write to the way I think. And it's humbling to see my ideas strewn about a piece of paper and realize, they're not as good as I think they are. So, maybe the tech overlords "hate this one trick". ha. I do wonder if more people started journaling if the world would become a better place. not a scientist, so I don't know how you'd even prove that. but, anecdotally, journaling is just as effective as therapy for me.

kruffalon

I object to the notion that this person is keeping a family journal with their memories. Unless they all share in writing and choosing images, it is a personal journal about a family from one members perspective. Other members of the family would have experienced the recorded events differently and would have chosen different things to record. (Written as a person that often thinks that different things are interesting and noteworthy.)

SoftTalker

It was actually such a popular post that the points total overflowed and went negative.