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Today marks an important milestone for me: I've reached a 365 day streak on the journal. A whole year!

Almost to the day two years ago I disabled my Journal plugin on the WordPress site to simplify things saying:

"I don't use it, don't need it, and certainly don't need it cluttering things up."

Last year, I chose to reimplement it with a simpler interface and now here I am with a system that obviously works for me. That I've managed to come this far is a testament to the power of the 'visual nag' as I call it, the little note at the top of the page when logged in showing me the journal streak. That was definitely a good design decision on my point which began on the WordPress site and carried over when I migrated the Journal to (b)log-In.

The Journal has been a notepad, a sounding board, a confidant, a record of events. I've been including a 'done list' since August, a daily note of what I achieved during each day, no matter how small, but the amount and quality of other journalling has been very patchy. But that's not the point. The point is that its always there, always ready to receive whatever I want to throw at it.

Patrick recently mentioned his Journal Day – "the day I use to reflect on the year(s) behind me and prepare for the year ahead. I flip through old journals. I take note of the accomplishments of last year. I prepare for the turn of the new year." – and today could become that for me. I often use my 'random entry' feature to flick through previous days, take a look back at what was happening but, maybe, a Journal Day could formalise it in some way and be a pause for thought and reflection.

I'm proud to have made it this far considering that I have always struggled to keep up the daily routine in the past. Here's to the next 365!

It's so uncharacteristically mild for the middle of December. I went out to our garage to empty the washing machine in a t-shirt and didn't feel even the slightest bit chilly. At 11pm! Tomorrow is supposed to be even milder.

The long range forecast, however, is predicting the chance of a 'snow bomb' shortly after Christmas with rates up to 1cm per hour and freezing temperatures. It's a shame we'll miss out on a white Christmas but a good blanketing is always welcome.