Starting Two Weeks With Apple Journal
For these final two weeks of the year I’ve been giving the Apple Journal app a test-run. I’ve not previously used any kind of journal app, although for more than a year, I think, I’ve jotted daily bullet points in Apple Notes that I use as a guide for therapy every Friday afternoon.
What prompted me to check out Journal are the early integrations with other apps in the Apple ecosystem. While this is extremely limited, at least in terms of what shows up through the in-app suggestions, I do like having entries headed by things like where I went that day and my daily walk, the latter of which includes what if anything I was listening to during my route.
Writing in a dedicated app, I’ve noticed that I’m writing more than just bullet points, instead writing full, if short, paragraphs. This is fine in and of itself but presents a challenge for therapy: having short lists for each day is an efficient framework for a fifth-minute conversation; not so much multi-paragraph journal entries.
It’s extremely obvious what’s missing, even if you’ve never come from some other journal app, the most glaring of which is an apparent lack of a search function. If the app remains just a single screen of reverse-chronological entries, the entire endeavor quickly becomes unwieldy. Even a calendar-style date picker would be useful here. It also disconcerting that in-app suggestions don’t include music or podcasts you’ve listened to on the devices on the same iCloud account. You can share from, say, Music to Journal but only as a new entry and not as data that appears in the entry header.
Mostly what I’m hoping for in short order is an expansion of what data you can bring in from other apps in the Apple ecosystem. I’d really love being able to add Health app data, which would be helpful for doctor appointments and, indeed, therapy.
We’ll see how it goes this Friday, and whether or not I’m capable of skimming longer journal entries in order to relate my week and how things went. There’s a clear benefit, writ large, for fuller journal use (presuming an eventual search function), but if I have to then prepare a separate bullet list to prepare for therapy, I’m not sure if that just makes for more work than is worth it, when being autistic is all about the management of resources.
Addenda
- Somehow I forgot one other glaring current omission: use of the Mindfulness app seems like a no-brainer to be able to include in journal entries but that’s not there, either.