What is it about journaling?

Is it just me? Or is there a resurgence in journal type writing and recording in this century? Diaries, journals, notebooks - call them what you like, people have been recording their stories in these forms or in the form of oral histories and storytelling since humans inhabited caves. Perhaps they have never been out of fashion, but more people are talking about it now. Or more open about what they are doing. Journals don't seem as private as they once were ... Between on line journals, diaries and blogs and a new wave of scrapbooking and selling of blank books, journal writing appears to be a more open trend. I know that there are certainly more blank books out there to choose from than there has been in the past.

As a journal writer and notebook keeper from way back I have watched the introduction of technology and its impact on the writing of one's stories and tried to maintain an academic interest. What a joke. I am way too passionate about the topic to be able to achieve this end. (Apologies to Simon and our endless discussions about objectivity vs subjectivity!).

I must go through my old thesis and some of the journal excerpts where I struggled, and a subsequent conference paper on journals in research and actually allow myself to reconnect with the passion. I need that passion to come back to feed me so I get intense before I start writing the book in any serious manner. The draft outlines are way too bland for my liking.

Hey - I have arrived well and truly as I note I begin to ramble ....