I have, on occasion.

I prefer to do mine as a non diary, where I simply write what's on my mind. It's like free therapy. When I have done it, I needed an outlet for that. Now when I go back and look at what I wrote it can be amazing just how much stuff I manage to forget about on the journey.

I'll be picking it back up again, soon. It makes one's creativity awaken, for one thing. I need to get off my duff and just DO it.

As a teenager and early 20sish person, I kept a journal. I wrote long ruminations in it, and I still have most of them.

Gradually I started sticking little bits of ephemera and stuff in them, to the point where they wouldn't close. Something needed to change.

I also just got sick of my own written voice.

So I went to another method of personal history-keeping - I now keep a small, blank sketchbook with me most of the time. I use it for everything non-work-related. In it can be found packing lists for trips, shopping lists, phone numbers and addresses, little sketches in pen or colored pencil, poems or inscriptions copied from monuments or museum labels, funny thoughts that struck me, good lines or quotes said by somebody, word games played in the car like Categories, etc.

This works for me far better than journaling did. When each book is filled, it brings back the concrete detail of my daily life in that period than any long written screed could have done.

I truly marvel that I ever had that much time to write about myself and, frankly, that much interest in myself. AS I've gotten older, the outer world has become more interesting to me, and the inner world less so. Still, I believe keeping a record of one's life is a good, reflective, and growth-producing thing to do. It's just about finding a way that works.

Like Miko, I have a book where I write down the dates things happen and wherein I stick ticket stubs, plane tickets, small notes and the like. I started three years when I realized I couldn't remember what year one of my cousins had been born and it had only been a two or three years ago.

I don't really keep a journal of my thoughts, although I do keep a book of essays based on things I remember: events, emotions, people, experiences. When I was an adolescent, I kept a journal because I didn't trust my friends enough to discuss my thought and emotions with them with that sort of candor and because I was an adolescent and self-absorbed.

At the moment, no, but… I started my first diary when I was about fourteen, and stopped writing in my last one when I was about twenty-nine. On the occasions I would re-examine what I had written, my feelings varied from acute embarrassment to secret pride. Eventually I threw most of my old diaries away: although I still have its two last volumes.

For another couple of years in my early thirties I kept an on-line journal at OpenDiary: the act of keeping a (semi-)public diary was a strange but good therapy for me. When I closed this diary, I opened a standalone public weblog which I kept up for another five years, though this came to be something more like an occasional scrapbook than an intimate daily journal.

The diary-writing, record-keeping thing has been a kind of recurring compulsion for me, which has manifested itself in various ways over the years, and which will very likely resurface again in the future.

I've kept journals on an irregular basis since I was 13 (I'm now 33). They provide catharsis and a way to untangle my thoughts. It's been interesting to look back and see that I have most of the same personality quirks and bad habits that I did when I was a teenager. That's helped me accept myself for who I am, and also realize that most people don't change very much over time.

I have kept one on and off since 4th or 5th grade. It's been off for the last year or so, but a couple of months ago I found a beautiful blank diary in a used bookstore. According to the inscription, it was purchased in Italy from "a paper shop in front of the Palazzo Pitti" and given as a Christmas gift in 1952. It was never used. Lovely binding, aged paper, Italian months, I couldn't resist, so starting Gennaio 1 I'm keeping a daily diary again.

I keep a private diary on Blogger. It started as a way for me to record whimsical thoughts. But, since I started therapy, it's a good way for me to get down thoughts about things that have been bothering me.

I started a couple diaries as a kid but never kept it up. I've had an online diary since June 2001. I used to post several times a day but that's kind of fallen off in the last couple years. It's also less of a journal than it used to be and more like a blog. I keep thinking I'll close it down but I like knowing it's there when I want to say something.

I've had an online diary since I started college and paper ones since I was old enough to actually write. I don't really re-read the online one, but I go through the paper ones once I fill them before I put them into a memory box.

I've written in some sort of little paper book ever since I was nine or ten. I don't use it in a prescribed way, and I occasionally go for longish intervals without using it, but it's always there, basically for hashing out thoughts, making lists and plans, noting down interesting odds and ends, and keeping myself company. I rarely review it unless there's something specific I want to look up, and I'm not sure where all the old ones are.

I keep an online journal, but that's primarily for keeping in touch with a few clusters of friends around the world, many of whom do the same.

I began keeping a diary at age 11, and pretty much kept it going through my first marriage. Maybe not every day, but at least several times a month. Then I only kept a dream diary for a while. I began journaling again during my single days, and kept that up for a long time, and still add to it on occasion. Only now I let great lapses of time occur, and only seem to write in times of great sorrow. I did have an online diary that I've let sit idle. Right now, I use a daily planner as a diary - it's always with me.

I still have all of my old diaries, though I haven't read them in years. I kinda feel sorry for the old me - I felt very Charlie Brownish. I can't imagine throwing them out, but I can't imagine my kids or grandkids ever reading them, either. So they're in limbo, I guess.

I keep a written one as a place to sketch out projects and ideas as they occur to me, but since I'm more aggressively doing the sound-art and less of the writing these days, I primarily carry around an mp3 recorder instead. Hearing the sounds of my life helps me recapture my experiences in far greater depth than any stylized description or simple narrative could do.

On a personal level, I occasionally feel the need to parse things out on paper, but I've done less and less of that as I've gotten older and more engaged in my projects.

I used to keep journals. Only under great stress do I jot down certain thoughts or notes. I keep my privacy even from other parts of myself.