I’ve been thinking that, for a number of reasons, that keeping a journal would be a good idea. Not a gushy, detailed journal about my feelings and every last thing I did that day, but just a very brief accounting of what happened.
Kind of like those austere journals kept by pioneer women on the prairie, you know? “63[sup]o[/sup], cloudy. Birthed Hortense’s foal, a roan filly, and put up 1 dz. jars of beets. Margaret now fully recovered from rubella. Still no word from Douglas.”
So I got a small appointment-book style calendar that has a fairly small space, about 1 x 2.5 inches for each day. (Got it cheap, too, since some stores have already marked down their calendars!)
Has anyone kept a journal in this style? I admire writing that is succinct (I know, you can’t tell this from my posts. Obviously it’s something I need to work on!) and I think that such a journal would be a good way to practice brevity and reflect upon my day and boil it down to the essentials, not to mention that it will make a convenient reference. Any stylistic tips and pointers? Should I work out some cryptic shorthand? Describe my day in haiku? 
If you make it a blog you will probably get a book deal out of it.
If you make it a journal, be sure your local library/historical society gets a hold of it and someone will use it to write a research paper.
I could never journal that way - verbose as hell, I am - but I have a friend who does and has for the last twenty years or so. Just brief notes on what happened on a given day, not big emotional diatribes or super-secret stuff.
It has come in handy for him a couple times. He received notice from the Illinois toll commission that they had photos of his car (or a car with his plates) running tolls and that he owed over $300 in fines. He checked the dates against his journal and was able to tell a judge exactly where he had been on each of those days. Obviously this was a case of “his word against mine” but when he walked into court with five years worth of journals and showed the judge the kind of mundane info he recorded (party at Steve’s today, took Al to the ER for stitches, etc.) the judge was pretty quick to dismiss the charges. (Just in case anyone cares, they did eventually catch the guy with the fake plates.)
I’ve kept such a journal for 42 years. It is amazing how a simple little sentence can help you remember the whole scene–“Saw CATS in previews, Chinese food supper and Joseph at night” brings back the performances and what I was wearing. It’s informative and habbit forming.
Chairman Pow, I find the notion that anyone would read my journal for historical research. terribly amusing.
“Mar 3: Graded physics papers and vacuumed the livingroom. The cat threw up. Still no word from Douglas.”
“Mar 4: Terrible snowstorm. Still drove in for astronomy class. Reduced some IR spectra. Still no word from Douglas.”
“Mar 5: Wrote physics exam and graded labs. Finally got e-mail from Douglas. He’s fine.”
I need to learn to read thread titles better.
I thought you were going to be journaling in your briefs. Damn.
Anyway, what with the time I spend on the puter everyday, I have a LiveJournal. I don’t post to it each and every day (wish I did, though) but I record some important stuff.
Well, that’s what history is all about. While I was getting the Honors part of my history degree a classmate wrote their paper on how settlers in the area viewed their environment and how it affected their everyday lives. She went through hundreds if not thousands of pages of journal entries and she described them exactly as you wrote (although they were slightly more verbose).
Another student did the same thing with British colonials and found much the same result - matter-of-fact boring shit with some personal insights (coincidentially, I wrote a story about a Colonial who lived in Egypt, got stuck in a pyramid and eaten by a mummy, written as a series of journal entries. She loved it and said that it was remarkably close to the style and content of her research - although she never made it clear if the Indian expititioners were eaten by mummies or not…).