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Comment by NoGravitas | Hacker News Reader

> I must be completely honest and make no attempt to hide from thoughts or feelings that arise. This can only be done (for me, personally) when I'm sure that no one's eyes will ever see it. Only then do I allow myself to be completely open.

Mainly a question for the author, who is unlikely to see this, but how do you ensure that no one's eyes will ever see your journal? I guess I could set up automatic GPG encryption for org-roam, and journal in there, but I'd much rather journal on paper. A safe? A cash box?

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For me, "no one" translates more accurately to "no one I care about." I keep my journal physically on my person, in the backpack with my laptop. If the backpack is stolen, I actually don't care if the thief reads my notes -- maybe he'll find something of value there. More than likely, he won't care about my interior conflicts.

My wife and friends know not to look through the journal without my permission, and I trust them. If I didn't trust them, I would find different friends.

I have created a writing system for p&p rpg long ago and I kept improving on it for years as a hobby. It's messed up on purpose, i used it for puzzles and my players (math and CS graduates) couldn't figure it out so it's good enough. I also got comfortable enough with it that i can read/write it reasonably fast. I'm using it for writing personal stuff down (on actual paper which i keep in my actual desk). It's also good for short notes kept in physical wallet. You won't decode it when all you have is 5 weird scribbles and i don't think a thief would steal my wallet, follow me home, search my home, steal my journal and do a cryptographic analysis just to read my journal or steal my bank account :)

I believe in physical air gap and security through obscurity far more than in keeping personal stuff on internet-connected Turing machines no matter how well the encoding algorithm is supposed to work.

I use vim-gnupg. It makes the whole thing a breeze. And in my experience, the author is completely right: I won't open up all the way unless I have guaranteed privacy. It's not that I have anything criminal to hide, but we all have things we're uncomfortable putting on the page and being forced to acknowledge as reality.

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