I’ve been a journal keeper since Mrs. Eisenhart’s tenth grade history class, in which she assigned us to write every single week. I’m grateful to her–she took the time to have us create our own history, which I would not have done otherwise. I have volumes and volumes of journals from before I got married. In spite of their cheesiness (and the drama! oh, the drama), they are a record of my life, and my growing up. If I were really brave I’d do the same thing these people do, and post my journal for the whole internet to read, but no. It’s not happening.

My post-marriage journaling is hit and miss. There’s less drama in my life, and more of a real sense of the posterity that could be reading what I write, which makes me less likely to say what’s really going on with me. Do I write about the struggles I have with a certain child, knowing that this child may read what I write later? Sometimes I do, other times I don’t. I wouldn’t necessarily say that parenting makes me less honest in my writing, more that it forces me to take the long view of what I’m deciding to commit to paper. It’s like blogging, in a way: knowing that the internet will never forget what I’ve said makes me choose my words more carefully.

This month for journaling I’m trying something new: journaling via text prompts, through my friend Roxanne Merket’s site Text My Journal.

The concept is simple: you sign up and receive daily text prompts to take a second and text something that made you laugh, or whatever you want to remember from the day, or something that made you think. You can text a thought to be recorded whenever you feel like it, not just when prompted, and include pictures and video. Check out the FAQ page here.

I love this idea; it seems like sitting down to write out a journal entry isn’t something I take the time to do more than once a month these days, and yet there are things I want to remember right now but am likely to forget. I want to remember that my two-year-old now says “Hi! I’m cute!” whenever you say hi to him, and that he pronounced “strawberry” correctly, with all the R’s, instead of the “stobby” (sniff!). I’ve signed up for the free two-week trial period (it’s $10 a month after that; there are also military and student discounts), and I’ll let you know how it goes. The best thing about it is the ease of record keeping: I don’t need to pull out scrapbooking supplies or get a perfect blog post written up. I just need to send a text and be done. I’ll always enjoy sitting down and writing a more lengthy, reflective entry, but when I have to capture a moment in words, and I don’t necessarily want to see if all my Facebook friends like the moment, this sounds perfect.

Are you a journal keeper? Have you ever read through your teenage journals, and would you dare read them aloud? Does the journal texting idea appeal to you?