My Union Journal

Recently a story came to my attention that really opened my eyes to the wonderful benefits of journaling.  A young woman was struggling with depression.  She just could not seem to shake the depression no matter what she tried.  She read self-help books, took anti-depressive vitamins and other medications.  One of her friends suggested she go see a counselor and the counselor gave her a simple suggestion.  Write in a journal.  So, the young woman researched several journals and considered several physical journals and electronic journals.  She ultimately chose a private web-based journal because it just fit her lifesytle better and she could login from home, work or her phone to write.  Plus, all her journal writings would remain completely private.  It was just the best fit for her.

On her next session with the counselor, the young woman asked her counselor what she should be writing about.  The counselor told her to just start “free writing”, meaning just write whatever comes to your mind.  So she did, and guess what.  The young woman started spilling her heart out in her journal and all of a sudden things from her past started coming out that she had completely forgot about.  Obviously she had repressed memories of some bad experiences in her life.  Fortunately, this free writing technique completely turned her life around. 

Now, the young woman is a mother of three, with a wonderful husband and a healthy and happy life.  She still writes in her journal regularly!  This is a great success story on the power of journaling and will certainly help others that may be experiencing similar depressive tendencies.  Create Your Journal.

Can you really put a price on your words?  Well, maybe, but the truth is that a journal or diary is intended to be a private place for you to go and really just spill your heart.  Many people like to publicly share their journals through other online sources, however, those journals or diaries are probably not always true representations of the person’s soul.  And really, who cares about someone else’s private journal.  To keep your complete privacy in regards to your diary entries and/or personal photos, you really cannot utilize one of the public websites that publish all your material.  Even if they claim that your journal/diary is private, the publishers of the website can often see your entries.  This is not the case here with My Union Journal. 

When you create a journal with MUJ, not even the publishers of this site can see your content.  Here’s the really cool part, you create your own password, and you simply provide the publishers of MUJ with a hint of that password.  We really never know what your password is.  Just in case you ever forget your password, we can provide you with the hint that you originally gave to us, but that’s it.  Only you know your password, and only your password can open and unscramble your journal.  Yes, your journal is completely scrambled until you login with your unique password, to virtually unlock your journal. 

So, to put a value on your journal is up to you, but you can certainly afford the modest $1.85 monthly fee for MUJ.  Or, to make it even more affordable, just pay for the entire year for only $6.95.  Choose MUJ, the most secure journal online!

It is a great idea to keep your travel journal online.  Maybe you only take one vacation per year, or perhaps you go on many.  Maybe you are a constant business traveler and basically live out of a suitcase.  Regardless of your travel habits, it is a great idea to keep a journal of your adventures.  When recording information about a trip in your journal, make sure this information is always included:

1. Who was involved.
2. Date (with MyUnionJournal you will login to the exact date - it makes this simple).
3. Name / City you traveled to.
4. Reason for travel (vacation, family reunion, business, etc.).
5. Events that took place (the story or account of the experience).
6. Special memories of your trip.
7. Attach pictures to your journal from the trip.

Remember to try and record your information about your trip as soon as possible.  It is amazing how quickly we forget the little details. 

Some great tips on photos to upload to your journal from your world travels. 

There are many different types of photographs you might want to save to your journal, depending on the trip. If you are on vacation with your family, obviously a group photo should be saved to your journal.  Maybe you visit all four parks in Disney World and you have a photo of you in front of all the parks’ signature points of interest (i.e. Cinderalla’s Castle); upload these photos.  Maybe you are visiting your grandparents for Christmas.  Put in pictures of your grandparents as they will be precious to you when you no longer have your grandparents.

You might want to include pictures of your children jumping in a pool, your favorite restaurant to eat at on vacation, or take a quick snapshot of the hotel/condo you are staying in so you can remeber from year to year whether or not you really liked the place. 

The objective is to capture the travels of your life in your online journal by combining photographs, and written memoirs. By recording your travels in this way, you will have a precious gift for a lifetime. You will be preserving memories, and it will become more valuable with each passing year.  Register With MUJournal Today.

Just look around you.  So many historical activities are happening right now that will be written about in history for years to come.  Yes, most of it is negative as reported by the news, but it is still very noteworthy.  I want to point out a couple of these points of interest that you may want to consider journaling about.  By chronicling your life in you own private journal you can look back years down the road and read your own writings to see exactly what you were experiencing at that time.  Here are some great things to write about:

1. The current state of our US and global economy.  We are seeing unprecedented swings in the stock market during daily trading.  This is driven by the poor housing market and the failed financial institutions.  Now, the government has stepped in to “bail out” or “rescue” these failed institutions to the tune of $750 billion dollars of the taxpayers money.  A good point of journaling is how this has affected you.  Maybe you have lost a lot of money in your 401k or perhaps you are going to have to push back retirement.  Maybe you are a student and you were unable to acquire a student loan to go to college because of this crisis.  Write about it in your journal.
2. We are in the midst of a historic presidential election.  There will be a first in 2008 regardless of who wins the election.  If the Democrats bring victory, then it will be the first time in history that a person of color (Barack Obama) will be President.  If the Republicans bring victory, then it will be the first time in history that a woman (Sarah Palin) will be Vice-President.  This is a great subject to write about in your journal to remember which ticket you voted.

With the failed banking and insurance industries, the fact exists that those mismanagement of funds by multi-billion dollar corporations has a trickle down effect on everyone, and ultimately the buck stops with us, the American consumer.   

Basically, lenders made poor decisions by selling mortgages to folks that couldn’t pay.  Borrowers also were in the wrong by taking on a mortgage they couldn’t afford.  Then, these bad mortgages were all packaged and sold in pieces as investments called “mortgage backed securities”.  Basically, these are securities sold by large investment banks to interested institutions and individuals at a discount, thinking that the housing market would recover and these low-priced bad mortgages would turn around and make lots of money.  However, that did not happen.  The investments instead started going down and all the institutions and individaul investors who bought these securities began losing their money.  However, a large percentage of these investors bought something called “Credit Default Swaps”.  These are marketed by the investment banks also as a type of “insurance” on these very risky investments like the mortgage backed securities.  However, credit default swaps are not called insurance because they are not regulated, therefore they call it swaps.  But, in theory, it works the same way and basically says that if someone buys one of these risky securities (i.e. mortgage backed security) and it loses money, then this credit default swap will be there to bail them out of their losses. 

Herein lies the problem.  The super huge investment banks and insurers (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG) who sold these credit default swaps did not have the cash reserves in house to cover the severe losses.  Therefore, Bear Stearns went down, Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy and AIG was bailed out by the federal goverment to the tune of $85 billion. 

Now, the bill was just passed last week to bailout the financial instituions to the tune of $700 billion.  This is money that the federal goverment (your tax dollars) will pay to bail out these extremely irresponsible corporations for gambling on securites that were always too risky to bid on. 

Any average Joe can tell you that if you buy a house you cannot afford, then you will not be able to pay for it.  However, these multi-millionaires on Wall Street just could not figure that one out.  Again, there is much more to the financial crisis of our current economy, but this is just a brief breakdown for you to share with your family and friends.

So, which is better, a subscription journal or a leather journal?  First, what do you think?  You are in a new age of technology and obviously you are online or else you would not be reading this blog.  However, sometimes you may find it relaxing to just sit down and put pen to paper.  So, we should objectively review both journaling techniques and then you should democratically decide for yourself which you prefer. 

Differences of a Subscription Journal and a Leather Journal:

1. Subscrption Journal is accessible from anywhere (as long as you are online).  Leather Journal is accessible from anywhere (as long as you carry it around all the time).
2. Subscritption Journal is secured by your own User ID and Password.  Leather Journal is secured by a physical lock and key.
3. Subscription Journal cannot be lost or destroyed.  Leather Journal can be lost and would burn up in a matter of minutes.
4. Subscription Journal holds unlimited space.  Leather Journal is limited by the number of pages available in the journal.
5. Subscription Journal accepts other medias (photos and files).  Leather Journal is really only good for writing.

So, it really is a personality type, and in my opinion, both journals have their benefits.  Everyone should have a leather journal handy, just in case you want to make a quick journal entry and then you can always go and record it in your subscription journal online later.  Create your Subscription Journal with MUJ for only $6.95 for a whole year (that is less than 2 pennies per day)!