Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts

A place for Life's serious Businesses

"Gap between the response and the stimuli"...Makes all the difference. While reading the Stephen Covey's Seven habits of effective people, I stumbled upon the line that explains about the gap or space between the response we make to a stimulus. The more we are in this space, the better we respond. It is a way to exercise and building the patience muscle. It is in this space that the wrong, as well as the right decisions and hence the actions, are made. These lines, Stephen Covey claims, struck him fresh and stuck with him ever since. I write these lines now, in a dark space,during a power cut, in peace. The realizations are many. Firstly, the book reading happened when Steffi was sleeping and I was sitting close by her, for she was having fever and chills. The doctor advised rest, good food and as anyone would guess, a few pills containing paracetamol. To provide her the peace, I had to ensure an environment that was peaceful for her, at least peaceful enough to enable her mind and body to enter a brief slumber. In doing so, I discovered the peace too, after a long time. Steffi, caring enough to not let me be bored, asked me to watch TV if I wanted to, but I chose to read, and hence the peace continued to exist, both inside and outside the mind, and the reading went on and these words are being typed here. A place for serious businesses of Life. While reading the book in absolute peace, I realized, all over again, that we all need a place, a well kept one, to deal with the important thoughts and aspects of life. A place in which introspection and reflection would not be interfered by the noise of the daily earthly routines. A place, say, to reflect on the journal, to sit in dark and see the life with the eyes closed, a place to read good books, a place to write the book which others would read in their respective peaceful places. This idea is definitely not anything new. We all know this, I knew this before, you knew this all along. All good principles and ideas are just like this, and this is best put by borrowing a line from the same book, "an idea whose time has come", an inward revolution. 

Online Journal keeping : An outlook


The Premise...

A daring attempt on writing a journal online, hoping for a better service+secrecy+eco-friendliness started on September 3rd and ended on September 4th! In lesser than 24 hours.

The image below is the snapshot of the my twitter page, which almost captures the bitterness in its pure entirety.


The irony is when a paper pulp journal keeper is momentarily enthused in maintaining a journal online.

Why would someone vacillate?
Here are the reasons...

  • tagging your entries 
  • attaching pics
  • auto-save
  • secrecy:password protection
  • privacy:you can write everything you want, whose gonna read it anyways?
  • keeping certain entries Super-protected with passwords
  • printable, if need be
  • get the entries delivered to mailbox, at the frequency you choose
  • get a remainder to the inbox, replying to which you can update your journal
  • An android, i-phone app that can sync both your PC and Mobile app contents/entries
  • and so-on!


The Short Lived surprise...


After the account was successfully created, without much of a form to be filled in. I learnt that these features are available to only pro-users. Almost 50% of the available options in the list above are for the pro users. SO...the screen below is probably the screen you would see often!



So, to make it a little easier on your eyes and the mind, I am re-writing the above list with colors; and with the colors pointing to the differences in the "free" and the "pro" versions...

  • tagging your entries 
  • attaching pics
  • auto-save
  • secrecy:password protection
  • privacy:you can write everything you want, whose gonna read it anyways?
  • keeping certain entries Super-protected with passwords
  • printable, if need be
  • get the entries delivered to mailbox, at the frequency you choose
  • get a remainder to the inbox, replying to which you can update your journal
  • An android, i-phone app that can sync both your PC and Mobile app contents/entries
  • and so-on! 
So..the solution?

I gave up on the idea of using a system that has been designed for online journal keeping. I mean, it all makes sense...why would it be free when the companies invest so much starting from the domain to the servers? The "pro" version is just justified.

I now have not given up on online journal keeping yet. But I prefer to use a faithful tool that has been there for as long as the Internet has existed : The E-mail.

How?

I just typed my entry for the day as an e-mail, attached the related pics, in fact one video as well (adding video in online journal keeping websites is still unavailable at large).

  • Our email accounts are no doubt private and secret. 
  • You can add pics and videos and also other file formats (ebook, podcasts, pdf, whatever etc)
  • you can color, bold, italicize the important words
  • auto-save and drafting, at times also future mail option comes in handy
  • one can also use the subject line: something like this : "Ram.N - Sep 4th - The Hangover Sunday"
  • So, if  need be, the mails can be searched, sorted and printed.
  • you could share it with anyone, if you want, to by just forwarding it
  • It's an email account. So you can use your phone of whichever OS, or a PC to update your day's entry
  • You can write your entry whenever you check mails. And for most of us, the "Whenever", is perhaps synonymous with "always"
Moral of the story

Lets not re-invent the wheel. The tools are all around us. Already dominant and efficient. Just a bit of lateral thinking, and there we are. "Web is what you make of it" ;)

Wish you a Happy online journal keeping. You already have an online journal by now don't you?!

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