How many keep a journal?

[Bisquitlips]

I have kept journals for decades and have found as I get older that they are a source of real enjoyment in my graying life. As I read back over some of my travel journals and our trips to Europe, my stint in Iraq with CENTAF in 2010, and just my everyday journals and thoughts from years ago, I have realized that when I invest some time to write things down in a journal, those writings are a type of buried treasure that I can dig up at any time and enjoy their worth.

This is not to mention what these writings will mean to my children someday and perhaps even my grand children and great grand children. I am sure that 70 years from now they will enjoy reading how my first 90 minutes in Iraq after arriving in Balad were spent being mortared holed up in a bunker and watching the UH-60s looking for something to light up.

If you have never been in a bunker and had a mortar impact 60 meters away it's hard to describe with the spoken word how the air is pressurized, your ears pop, your nose runs, and vertigo ensues for a few seconds. Not to mention that metallic taste in the back of your throat and mild nausea. But I was writing it down while it happened so it is crystal clear when I read it now. And hopefully not just to me, but to anyone who reads it in the future.

Do any of you keep a journal? If so, what kind? Travel? Everyday journal? Book journal? Pen journal with things like ink tests, pen reviews, acquisitions and dispersals. There are many kinds of journals and most of the great men in history kept one or more of them.