Friday, November 04, 2011

Common Place Book

I cannot tell you how many times a week or a day I tell myself "oh I'll remember that" and then the information I thought I would remember is gone. The idea of keeping a common place book to write down quick thoughts and ideas is not such a bad idea. I know the idea of keeping a "journal" to some may sound silly, but losing valuable memories, ideas, and information actually sounds sillier. Scrapbooks and pictures are the only way I really remember my past sometimes and the common place book is similar. Facebook however, I do not think is similar. Yes, you can write down thoughts and ideas but all these thoughts and ideas are public therefore some of us would choose not to put them on facebook. There is the chance to be judged and critiqued and that is not the point of a common place book. I think that we all should start writing down thoughts, memories, and bits of information in some sort of personal common book; it's not something that we can really regret, but possibly really be happy we did later.

3 comments:

Quinton Lee Cappel said...

I agree. I have a lot of thoughts and ideas that I think are important but when I try to remember them a lot of times I completely forget what they were. I think it is useful to keep a common place book I kind of do it on my phone now using notepad where I write things down and save them throughout the day and it has been helpful.

emilys7 said...

I agree as well. Like you, I tell myself I'll remember things. Things like family vacations and memeories from my childhood. However I feel those are somewhat slipping away and I regret not keeping a journal or common place book then. I kind of keep one now but I don't usually write in it everyday and I feel like I should. It's not a silly idea to me at all either.

Andrew Linkugel said...

This sounds like a good idea even in today's world - I've definitely tried to look back days or weeks in my phone at a text to try to figure out what I was doing at a certain time. I think a pretty cool piece of technology would allow us to store important mental notes, pictures, or sounds as we see them (and judge them to be important). A kind of stream of consciousness picture of our life would be a useful tool for trying to analyze our decision-making and planning processes.