I’ve realized that I rarely look back at past entries. Journaling, for me, is a way of processing what I’m thinking about and feeling in the present, so I try to let it flow out of me with zero planning or rereading. I’m wondering if anyone here refers back to old entries when writing new ones, or even uses old entries to analyze trends over time. What do you do with the longer view?
Depends.
The main issue I have is that for decades I’ve had that habit of destroying my old journals (physically getting rid of them, shredding or burning them). Why? I started journaling as a little kid but thx to my inquisitorial mom I quickly learned to get rid of my old journals. And it then took my entire live for me to get rid of that sad habit which made it obviously harder to read old entries ;)
Nowadays, not only do I keep (and read, occasionally) my old journals but I also index them (at least teh part I consider interesting/useful enough) in my Zettelkasten note-taling system. But I’m also not obsessed by the idea of reading my journals and I can go for a very long times without looking at old entries. Up until I feel the need to check something, or just to browse a few pages.
Finally, I journal mostly to put some order into my head like I use to say. I will also journal to keep a record of a few events I want to be able to recall but for the most part it’s processing/brain dump. The same with the sketches I may add in that journal, btw: I don’t give a crap about looking at them later on when I’m drawing them (that’s certainly why I don’t care if they’re crappy either) and when I stumble upon them, later on, I will often be surprised myself by what I sketched ;)