"The unexamined life is not worth living"
--Socrates



"Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "... I drank what?""
--Chris Knight, Real Genius

Whatever version of Socrates' wisdom you prefer, there's definitely something of value in keeping in a journal. Some published journals have never left print, revealing the lives and psychology of geniuses, ordinary people, people in moments of historic turmoil, and people with nothing more thrilling than the play of light in an almost empty room. Even if you aren't Virginia Woolf or Anne Frank, your descendants might wish to know who you were, you may wish to remember your youth when you're old.

I irregular keep a journal*, mostly as a pretext to write with fountain pens, and that journal is frankly, what Johnson identifies as the introspective whine, a psychological venting of spleen and complaints that I'd be embarrassed and terrified to show anybody else. The core of Johnson's practice is to focus first on sensation, then on memory, then on pattern and narrative. The specific sensory impression of a moment, like Proust's madeleine, acts as a trigger to a whole world of the cobwebbed past. And as the moments come alive again, you can see the choices you made in your life that, well, made your life. Each chapter is dotted with specific examples and closes with useful exercises. I hope they'll improve the quality of my journals.

*it also strikes me that in many way, my 1500+ book reviews over 10 years on this site are another journal, so thank you for reading along, friends.