These are my current open tabs on my browser at the time of writing this:
The National Park Service's page on wetlands, bogs, and marshes.
Lyrics for the song "Lofty" by Propaganda.
Search results for Presto Canner replacement parts.
A YouTube tutorial on foreshortening using the coiling technique.
Vinyl record sales predictions.
Cornell Lab's page on Dead Sea Sparrows.
Various tabs on how to mod a Kindle and if it's worth it.
Search results for images of tattoos on mummies.
To name a few.
I am no stranger to a good rabbit hole. A research topic a day keeps the ADHD at bay, or something like that. Though likely, the research topics and rabbit holes are encouraging the ADHD brain gremlins, but hey, at least I'm learning something.
I set out a few months ago making an "anti-rot protocol" because I, like most artists regardless of the craft of choice, reached burn out. Not because of the lack of inspiration, but quite the opposite. I have magpie brain. I know a good trinket, a sticker, pretty paper and pens. My screenshots folder is none of my business. I hoard information and photos and quotes as if I can absorb them through osmosis.
Well. I take it back. My screenshots folder is my business, and that's exactly the problem. As it turns out, you don't need the internet to rot. The internet just makes rotting more easily accessible.
The two main goals I have regarding my anti-rot protocol is to repair my attention span and my "retention span" which is just another silly way to say I want to improve my memory. Ideally, this protocol will be an integral part of my every day life, and to some degree, it's working. (See above list of open tabs on my desktop.) This kind of explorative research and play is something I've refined over the years, this new protocol being one of the refinements. Plus, there are major do's and don'ts when it comes to doing good research. Though I have other goals and habits I outlined in my protocol, a large practical facet of this is changing how I journal. Again.
Over the years, I've tried all sorts of journal formats. I had a journal for big life events, one for gratitude, one that took me nearly seven years to completely fill... and many others. Juggling all of them not only made archiving extremely difficult, it also was overwhelming and defeated the purpose of journaling, at least, for me. I wanted to have a place to keep memories, freely express my thoughts, and for general processing as a means for stress relief. I also wanted to be able to find things I'd written to reference for later, or use in other writing. And recently, it's come to my attention by means of the "analog trend" that this process, though chaotic, was the act of keeping an "ecosystem". Through this analog sensation (ironically) sweeping the internet, I also discovered common-place books, having unknowingly kept one in my ecosystem. While the "analog trend" is new, keeping a common-place book is not (see John Locke's Method for Common-Place Books).
With my disorganized and scattered system, it was less a pretty and glamorous ecosystem and more like... a swamp, with slimy moss-covered trees and murky water that definitely doesn't have Creatures™ lurking beneath the surface. Until sometime in 2022, my swamp became a cute little pond, and I started using only two journals. One for devotional notes, and the other as a diary. This pond, however, did not solve my archiving problem. The dates didn't overlap as well as I wanted.
In an effort to make things less confusing, early 2025 I swapped to one thick journal that kept everything. My pond became soup, akin to a cozy soup on a cold autumn evening. Archiving was a breeze. Not only was everything in one place, I only filled two journals this way. See? Easy archiving. However, one problem remained unsolved; I still couldn't find anything in them. Even with color coded labels, paper clips, and bookmarks, those little one-sentence nuggets, random doodles, and prose were lost in the soup (not including the years worth of journaling swamp prior to my soup system). At this point, going back to index my journals would be a monumental task, and it is highly unlikely that I'll keep up a daily indexing system, because the executive is consistently dysfunctioning.
As rewarding as it's been to fill two journals with fluffy pages stuffed with ephemera, it's time to break things apart again. I must face the facts. The magpie brain tendencies make it difficult to adhere to the part of my anti-rot protocol to improve retention, as I try to fit everything comfortably in one journal without losing the information or forgetting it in the process. Hoarding information for it to rot in my journals is counterproductive to the protocol.
Since I understand my tendency to bite off more than I can chew, I took inventory before changing anything (pro tip for my fellow magpies with ADHD), and this is what I discovered.
I need the system to work for me, not me working for the system. Something that indexes and archives itself, where I have easy access to lists, trackers, and other important information, such as recipes for shiny hunting Pokemon, or for tracking my sleep hygiene, as means to avoid having a ton of lists in all of these different places. But this all has to be done without giving myself a monumental load and routine just for journals.
Enter: ✨a glossary, traveler's notebook, and a media journal.✨
I still have my planner, my weird little commonplace travel sketchbook, and a catch-all journal like before, along with a semi-new "war binder" for my Bible study materials, and my very long-standing and growing book of recipes, however now my system includes as-you-go indexing and archiving, along with better portability and flexibility.
Because I was stashing everything in one journal, I found that as time went on, my journal became a liability. She got really thicc, with two c's— too cumbersome to fit in my purse, and too chock-full of very personal thoughts to be brought out in public. Which is why I chose to integrate a traveler's journal into my little soupy, swampy ecosystem. It's a perfect size to carry in my purse, without the stress of bringing my entire life with me in public. Here I carry separate inserts for my church notes, a quick glance glossary of Russian I'm building as I learn (gotta impress the in-laws), and soon, a commonplace book and sketchbook when I fill my current one.
My glossary is what it sounds like; a glossary. But, for life. I intend on putting business cards into it, along with any other academic notes and reference. I've mapped out a spring curriculum as an experiment this year, in line with my anti-rot protocol, so I hope to put this one to good use during that time.
The media journal is designated for reviews and reference for movies, books, videogames, and music. It'll be more of a creative journal and scrapbook, as opposed to my glossary which will be mainly writing and charts. I want to engage more with the media I consume, and I'm looking forward to color coding my table of contents for what medium I'm writing about, and to have a place for the aforementioned shiny hunting recipes for Pokemon games. I recently rewatched one of my favorite shows, and I'm planning a small scrapbook spread for it, along with thoughts about what more I noticed watching it a second time.
In my already existing journals, I've tweaked a few things, such as adding a sleep tracker in my planner, officially establishing my commonplace journal, and trying a different and much larger size for my catch-all; an 8.5x11 inch journal with two ribbon bookmarks, a velvety smooth emerald green cover, and 400 dot grid pages. A little different than my previous two A5, 300 page journals. Considering that I will be using the new catch-all as I did my previous ones, she's about to be thiccc (← three c's).
This system is a more structured way of doing what I was already doing, where the information I record while out in the wild is funneled into more manageable, findable, pieces of information. Ideally, things will be transferred from my traveler's notebook inserts into my catch-all, where it will then be funneled into my glossary, my war binder, or my media journal. I like to think I've gone from my weird soupy swampy pond into a marsh, where the cranes and herons glide over the whispering waters and the tall grasses teem with life.
Will I be journaling more often? Yes. Will this take more of my time? Absolutely. Is it redundant? Slightly. But that's the point. I'd rather spend time sorting thoughts, recording things that inspire me, and putting them to memory, than to be at the mercy of a predatory algorithm full of AI slop, ragebait, and draining content about clothing hauls and poorly written skits posted by severely out-of-touch influencers doing their darndest to seem relatable. Not that there isn't substance online, but when you do find it, the algorithm keeps it from you? For some reason? Shareholder growth, or whatever.
Anyway, here's to combating The Big Rot™ with Anti-Rot™ and using our brains!
I'll end this with a quote I wrote down in my common-place journal (😏) from a YouTube video I discovered recently from a woman who's kept a journal for over 40 years, emphasis added.
"a couple people wrote that they had actually been accused of being narcissistic for keeping a journal. And that to me is probably the most heartbreaking, because, I mean we can go back to antiquity and find people like Socrates who has said 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' I think that the moral there is that keeping a journal isn't an act of narcissism. It is an act of trying to understand the world around you and figuring out how you fit into it and how you can improve yourself to be of better service to others. It is such a shame for people who feel as though this is somehow a selfish act, that this is somehow a narcissistic thing to do. For me, this is self-care of the highest order.... but don't let the fear of an invasion of privacy steal your voice."
~ in short, a bog is acidic, a marsh is not, and a swamp is a marsh in a forest. The more you know.
