I don’t actually search through my journals that much to make it worthwhile to put every entry into digital form.Witness John Adams’s diaries or Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. Digital media has been around half a century or so. I still think there is a compelling argument for how long paper lasts.Last night, I decided not to keep my journal in Obsidian and to continue with the notebooks. After a little thought, that felt like a monumental waste of time. Then they’d be there for searching and linking. At the end of each week, for instance, I could type up the entries I’d written in the Moleskine notebook, copying the entries into Obsidian.
![macjournal markdown macjournal markdown](https://www.tribeseo.com/wp-content/uploads/MacJournal.jpg)
It occurred to me that I might have the best of both worlds with a little effort. I liked being able to link these entries to other notes. Several weeks ago, I decided to give it a try, and I began writing my journal entries in Obsidian, giving each entry a unique number, continuing from where I left off. This makes it ideal for linking in Obsidian.
![macjournal markdown macjournal markdown](http://a1297.phobos.apple.com/us/r30/Purple/v4/3f/d2/50/3fd25001-9378-0369-e583-a3fdc55e6c96/mzm.znsnoxha.png)
(I took this lesson from Isaac Asimov’s description of how he numbered entries in his Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology in order to avoid the tedious work of tying index entries to page numbers.) Thus, I have 1,782 unique “entries” each with its own number. I did this thinking ahead: if I ever wanted to index the thing, I wouldn’t have to worry about what volume or page and entry was on. I date the first one of each day, but there may be two or three entries in a day, each of which will have its own number. Rather than an entry-per-day, I number entries, beginning at 1. As it turns out, how I keep my journal lends itself Obsidian linking.