How Did You Digitize Your Journals?

I’ve got about 35 volumes of journals I’ve kept over the years, and I’d like to digitize them. The problem is there are so many options out there it’s overwhelming at first glance.

Mark Koester as a nice article, but it’s from 2019 and I suspect things are quite a bit different now.

I’m not going to buy a scanner to do this. I do have good lighting, and some space and a table, and I can get a pane of glass to hold things flat. I have an old iPhone 8 I can dedicate to the task, or an iPhone 14 Pro Max, or a Sony ZV-E10. Maybe the last with a zoom lens would be the best choice.

I’m not an artist so I don’t need to capture subtle shades or brushstrokes. I do want color, and I do want whatever OCR has to offer to make them searchable after the fact. I’m in the Apple ecosystem.

I’m just starting to search for ideas, so if you’ve got links or suggestions please let me know!

Morning pages – in the journal or separate book?

I started doing morning pages a while back, and I been doing them in a these cheap kraft notebooks. I didn’t know how this would turn out, and doing the math I could see it would mean filling a few books a year.

But now I’m thinking of moving them into my journal. Why? I’m finding what I’ve been writing is part journaling, and I find myself re-writing stuff in my journal because I feel like it needs to be in the ‘official’ record.

I’ve also thought about doing morning pages on a legal pad and just tossing the sheets. On days when they’re 80% complaining and other emotional spew, that’s probably a good idea, but when you start you don’t really know what’s going to come out.

What do you use for morning pages?

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