JW Caterine

Journaling is something I do almost every day to help manage my mental health. If you’re reading this, you probably journal too and have used some of the journal apps that are out there.

Using an app makes journaling easy. I can type a lot faster than I can write by hand, and it’s a convenient way to store entries, look back at them, and search through everything.

But I don’t use journal apps anymore. Now I use some very simple bash and Python scripts to journal directly on my computer in markdown files.

The First Attempt

I actually tried journaling privately a few years ago. ChatGPT had recently come out, and I used it to build my own little journal app. I wrote with that for a while, but I ended up stopping, mostly because I was lazy. I’d forget to journal before leaving for work, and then I wouldn’t have access to my local computer, so I couldn’t access my app.

That was one of the things that brought me back to Notion, the trendy productivity app. I could write journal entries on my phone sitting on the toilet. Freedom!

Except that “freedom” came at the cost of Notion, Inc. handling all of my journal data, a price at the time I thought was worth the convenience.

The ChatGPT Phase

This is really embarrassing to talk about. Last summer, I decided to try using ChatGPT for journaling.

The idea was that it would give me feedback on my entries and make it easy to summarize the week.

There were a handful of times where the response genuinely helped me think about something in a new way. But most of the responses were long and redundant.

ChatGPT did make the weekly summarizing easy, but they were in ChatGPT’s words, not mine. Looking back, I found that it was hard for me to remember the feeling of what had happened on a given week since the summaries were not in my own words.

The Real Problem

But the bigger problem—and this extends to all journal apps—is something I didn’t realize until I started journaling privately again on my computer.

You don’t realize how much you self-censor when you’re writing on these journal apps.

At least for me, I always had in the back of my mind that I was being surveilled by these apps, that they were using my data in ways I wasn’t entirely sure about, so I wouldn’t share private stuff. I wouldn’t really write about my family. I wouldn’t name people at work or share anything that had to do with real emotions, which is kinda the whole point of journaling.

Making the Switch

The reason I made the switch was that I got really sick over the summer and ended up watching a bunch of documentaries. Some of them, like The Great Hack ( about Cambridge Analytica), got me thinking about privacy, and it motivated me to find a more discreet alternative for journaling.

I discovered this blog called Plaintext Productivity where the author makes the case for plaintext files being a simple solution to file management with no lock-in. That really appealed to me.

So I used Claude to make a very simple bash script that loaded a simple journal template in markdown, and I’ve been journaling privately on my computer since then. My system has evolved to include other templates like weekly and monthly planning and review, but I’ve tried to keep it straightforward.

I really wish I had started journaling like this sooner.

My dad passed away a year ago. When I look back at the journal entries I made with Notion or ChatGPT last year, I don’t really talk about losing him at all. I didn’t want to share those tough feelings on a third-party app, but now it’s hard for me to go back and think about what I was feeling, which I would really like to be able to do.

Stop Self-Censoring

The main takeaway is this: we should all be questioning how much we self-censor with journaling apps. Even if you’ve convinced yourself that it’s secure and that they’re not doing anything nefarious with your data, just try writing locally on your own computer and see what comes out.

As for the convenience problem that made me go back to Notion originally, I’ve basically just become more disciplined about writing in the morning. And I also don’t care as much if I miss a day. Being flexible is important.

I hope I’ve inspired you to try journaling privately and getting off any app you’re on. Computers are inherently powerful on their own. We don’t need to rely on platforms or apps to get a benefit out of them.