It’s personal, I get it.  There is no right or wrong answer here.  I suppose the question is, what motivates you?

I have a stack of dream journals and they are dear to me.  Full of middle-of-the-night chicken scratch notes floating sideways off of the lines only to be later revised into slightly more legible and elaborate chicken scratches.  Words tucked in and around rudimentary drawings of scenes, symbols, and scenarios.  Date at the top.  Scribbles in the margin to bring the pen back to life.  There is an intimacy between thoughts, pen, and paper.  There is a soulful connection that is made while physically forming the shape of each letter with the precise motor skills of the fingers, wrist, and forearm.  It seems to say, “I see that there is value in this activity so please, open me up to more.”  Lately, though, I must say, I have been struggling with some matters of practicality and, after careful consideration, have switched over to digital for dream journaling.  “Blasphemy!”, you say.  Perhaps, but here are some things that I had to consider along the way.

Speed — People will fall to either side of spectrum or anywhere in between as it relates to time efficiency.  As it happens, I can type far faster than I can write by hand. According to unverified sources on the Internet, the average speed for handwriting is 31 words per minute while the average person types 40 words per minute.  If we assume that both of these statistics are equally flawed, perhaps we can agree that, for the purposes of abbreviated journal entries, we are at a “break-even”… though typing may have a slight edge.  I, however, happen to be a bit clumsy with the pen but I can type really fast!  Is it sexy?  Not at all.  It’s like hammering a nail into the wall versus, I don’t know, playing a violin.  But for me, I can produce more content in less time when keying in dream entries.  Typing comes so much more comfortably and naturally that I am actually motivated to include more detail than when writing longhand.  Again, for others, the exact opposite is true.  Handwriting flows like a river while typing is like a game of hide-and-seek with the keyboard.

Accessibility — Let’s say you maintain a stable practice of dream journaling for a year and, on average, you capture between one and three dreams each night… some nights more and some none.  With an all-in average of 2 per night, you are still up to 730 dreams per year.  Now, if your goal is to simply reflect, record, and move on, penning down hundreds of dreams each year is just fine.  However, if you are like me, you may want to take your dream practice a step further and begin to apply some analysis or interpretation.  You may want to identify common themes, trends, or reoccurring “dreamsigns.”  You may want to conduct experiments, practice incubation techniques, or find connections between dreams and future events.  There is a lot of fun to be had with these sorts of things.  What is not fun, however, is sifting through hundreds of journal pages trying to locate that one dream that you know you had about your car being stolen… probably last summer.  Or was it the fall?  A key word search would sure come in handy right about now.

It was the combination of the two factors above that ultimately lead me to make the leap from a written journal to electronic.  I still keep the pen and pad on my night stand to capture the midnight cave drawings but when it’s time to flesh it out the following day, I am using Evernote (https://evernote.com).  I find the interface to be clean, simple, and powerful all at the same time.  All of the features that I use are available in the Basic (free) version.  I create one new note for each day that I have a dream or dreams to document.  I title the entries by date in such a way that they organize with the oldest at the bottom and newest at the top (like “2015 0915-16” for the night of September 15-16, 2015).  I use “tags” for each post if there are key words that I want to associate with the entry such as dreamsigns like “no clothes”, “back to school”, or “people from my past.”  I will also use tags like, “lucid!”, “reality check”, and “precognitive.”  Then, for fun, you can pull up a full list of your tags and find that Evernote has indicated how many times each one has occurred in your history of entries.  If you are not sure what your trending dreamsigns are, this is a great way to find out.  Then, of course, there is the key word search.  This is not limited to the tags that you applied.  You can search for any random name, word, or phrase and find a cull-down of your journal entries that apply… instantly.  There is also a free app for journal entries on-the-go.  I love it.

For the artists out there who are inspired to journal visually, more power to you.  While I do sketch from time to time, it’s the exception and, yes, I can snap a quick picture with my phone and add the image to my Evernote journal entry.  That works for me.  For those of you thinking about using a voice recorder, proceed with caution.  I find that a voice recorder might be effective to take down those reminder notes throughout the night but may prove to be even less accessible than the handwritten notes referenced above.  It’s very difficult to skim, search, and locate inside of audio recordings.

In the end, however, the statement at the top holds true.  Contemplating our personal favorite method for dream journal keeping assumes that we are, in fact, keeping a dream journal in the first place.  This is the important piece.  From a casual dream practice for fun to an intense dream practice for advanced goals, keeping a dream journal is foundational.  It will enhance your dream recall tremendously and provide you with an archive for future reference and entertainment.  It’s a unique experience to read through journal entries that are several years or even several months old.  I’m often struck with a profound sense of intrigue and the thought , “Who wrote this?!”  Even though I was able to recall the dreams long enough and well enough to document them at the time, my conscious mind still managed to chase away the details with the exception of a standout few.  With my journal, however, I can rediscover these gems.  It is during these future reviews that I am also most likely to uncover some staggering insights that either eluded me originally or were simply premature.

I propose that if you believe your dreams are valuable and invest in them by way of intentionally recalling and documenting them, something touching happens; they begin to invest more in you.  As if to say, “Ah, now I have your attention.  Let me share something important or impactful with you.”