DIARY

by Paul Nervy
Copyright (c) 2006 by Paul Nervy

Visit www.paulnervy.com

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CONTENTS

Introduction
Chronological organization
Subject organization.
Importance organization.
Rough drafts or scrap paper area


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INTRODUCTION

What is this?
Diary, journal, personal history.
Its a record of your life.
Its a story of your life.
Its a movie of your life.
Its a database of your life.
Its a web site of your life.
Its your life.


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Why do it?
Why write a diary?  Why do personal history?
Develop the ability to look at yourself.
Develop the ability to think with words.
Give your memory a workout.
Give your emotions a workout.
Make sense of your life.
Ascribe some meaning to your life.
Develop purpose for your life.
Guide yourself into the future.
Organize your thoughts.
Find out how you feel about things.
Asign importance to events.
Defragment your mental hard drive.
Arrange your mental sock draw.
It can be fun.

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How do it?
How to do personal history?


Questions of structure.

Diary as a database.  
You can write your diary as a tab delimited text file using the following categories:
Date (tab) Subject (tab) Description (tab) Importance rating.
Then you can sort by any of the fields (date, subject, description, importance).
This produces a structured, organized approach to personal history.
This approach makes it easier to search for information.

Or your diary can be less structured.  

For example, you could create a diary that is hyperlinked by writing it in html.

Or you could combine the above to approaches and create a hyperlinked database.

Or you could add images, sounds, or image/sounds like home movies.



Questions of mechanism.

You don't have to write everyday, but do a little bit every few days.  Don't try to do it all at the end of a month or year because you will miss a lot.


How much time to spend on it?  An hour a week?


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CHRONOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION

Year by year section.
        Month by month.
                Day by day.

On a sheet of paper or in a text file, write a list of the years you have been alive.  Under each year keep a list of things that happend using a format like the following:

Date (tab) subject (tab) description (tab) importance rating.

The above will provide a chronological organization for the events of each year.


Overview section - a life summary using a line for each year.


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SUBJECT ORGANIZATION

One can create a subject organization of the events of one's entire life.
One can also create a subject organization of the events of each year.

Year   

Age

Overview of year.  Sum up of year.

Health.  Medical history.

        Psychological health.
                Capabilities.
                Challenges.

        Physical health.
                Capabilities.
                Challenges.

Sociology.  Social life.  People.
        Main squeeze.
        Women I dated.
        Friends.
        Family.
        Acquaintances.
        Antagonists.  Conflicts.

Job.
        Jobs I worked.
                Company name.
                Job name.  Pay rate.
                Co-workers.

        Job searching.
                Jobs I applied for.
                Sent out resumes to following places for following jobs. 

        Job attitudes.
                Jobs I considered ideal, and why.
                Jobs I considered unsatisfactory, and why.

School.
        Year or grade level.
        School name.
        Courses or classes taken.  
        Teachers.
        Classmates.
        Material learned.
        For levels of school.
                Elementary.
                Jr high school.
                High school.
                College.

Leisure.  
        Maintenance: Exercise, Diet, Sleep.

        My major projects in leisure time.  Productive, life-affirming challenges.

        What I did on weekends.  
        What I did in my free time.
        Hobbies.  
        Hangouts.

        Vacations and trips I took.  
                School summer vacations.  
                Work vacations.  

Home.
        Lived where.
                House.
                Neighborhood.
                Community.  
                World.

Economics and finances.
        Earnings.
        Savings and Investments.
        Purchases.  Spending.
        Expenses.
                Recurring expenses.
                        Food a month.
                        Rent a month.
                        Transportation a month.
                One time necessities and luxuries.
                        Tuition.
                        Books, music, movies.

Culture
        Knowledge.  Infotainment.  Entertainment.
        Books.  Purchased.  Read.
        Music.  Heard.
        Movies.  Saw in theatres.  Saw on television.
        Internet.  Websites found.
        Visual arts.  Art found.
        Other arts.  
        Other media: Television.  Radio.
        Art produced.  Art consumed.

World events.  
        Philosophy, psychology and sociological events.
        Political and legal events.
        Science and technology events.
        Economic and business events.
        The arts.

Food.  Memorable meals.
Clothing.  Clothes I lived in.
Shelter.  Homes I lived in.

People.
Places.
Things.
Events.
Actions.
Ideas.

Times of the day.  Mornings and evenings.
Days of the week.  Weekends and weekdays.
Seasons.  Summer, winter, autumn, spring.

Ideas - history of ideas in an individual.  
When did you first think of an idea or find out about an idea.
When did you first adopt that idea or hold it to be true, useful and important.

Dreams.

Year.  Age.  Overview of the year; sum up of the year.


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IMPORTANCE ORGANIZATION

Most important people, places, things, events, ideas.
Most significant.

Biggest changes.  
Biggest progress.  
Biggest obstacles to growth.

Things on which I spent the most time and energy.
Things that constantly happened or reoccurred.


Best things that I did or that happened to me.
Good things that happened.

Worst things that I did or that happened to me.
Bad things that happened.


One way of assigning importance to an event is to write out "this was important because..."
Another way of assigning importance is to apply a rating scale.  


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ROUGH DRAFT TOPICS AREA

One can create an area for rough drafts of stray memories on minor topics.


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