Why You Should Document Everything
I write every day. Not for public consumption — just to keep a record of my thoughts, ideas, and things that happened that day.
At the moment, my app of choice is Roam Research, but I started off using the iNotes app that synced across my Apple devices.
Most of the time, I don’t read the stuff I wrote until months or years down the road, or when I decide that I need to figure out what I was doing on a specific day. This happened recently when I was making a book of memories for my one-year anniversary with my boyfriend.
I decided to print out some photos of us and write about the memories those photos represented. Obviously, I didn’t remember every detail, so I dug through the notes I’d made.
I found that some days, I had very detailed notes on what we’d done, down to the topics we’d discussed and things we’d said. Other days were sparse, and I felt a tinge of regret that I hadn’t documented more.
It was almost like the memory of that day was lost. The photos we’d taken wouldn’t be able to tell the full story.
That’s why I want to take more videos, even though it may seem a little challenging and awkward at first. Photos and written journal entries are nice, but they can’t really capture the moment like videos can.
I know some friends who make it a habit to take videos all the time — you know, the vlogging type — and while it can be tedious having so much footage to store and sift through, I truly think it’s worth it.
I mean, you don’t have to be a professional videographer or whatever. There was a point in time when I recorded daily videos (“vlogs”) of myself just speaking to my laptop or phone camera, dumping my thoughts at that moment.
I always thought that I wouldn’t have much to say, but 20 minutes later, I realised that I had said way more than I possibly could have written if I’d tried to type or write it all out.
Watching those videos almost a year later, I was surprised to hear my train of thought at the time, to see what I looked like, to see where I was (e.g. the apartment in Sydney that I don’t live in anymore), and to catch my weird habits because I tended to fidget and multitask a lot while recording (I mean, it wasn’t for public consumption anyway).
Our memories are so limited — sometimes we don’t even remember what we had for lunch yesterday. Once the moment is gone, it’s gone forever.
That’s not to say that I think we should record every single moment, because that would probably take away from being truly present in the moment.
But I do think that it’d be cool to capture some day-to-day moments that might seem insignificant at the time, but bring so much joy when the memories come flooding back later.
I’m so glad that I took those vlogs all those years ago because they’ve preserved those moments in time that I would’ve otherwise completely forgotten.
Stupid things like recording the messiness of my kitchen after I’d just done some meal prep, rambling on about something that’d happened at uni that day…seemingly inconsequential yet precious memories.
It’s nice to look back on photos of trips, places you’ve been and food you’ve eaten, but I think it’s more important to record your day-to-day thoughts and what you were feeling at that point in time.
There’s only so much that a photo of a bowl of rice can tell you. Where were you at? Who were you with? What did you talk about? How did the rice taste?
And it’s so easy nowadays to record your memories and store them safely. Everything can be done with a smartphone. There’s no need to share any of it with others, but it might just come in handy one day when you want to look back on how far you’ve come.
