Journaling as Spiritual Practice

Yesterday in a staff meeting, we had a brief discussion of spiritual practices. Amidst some interesting practices such as setting out seasonal decorations or making the bed each morning, (and with one of ours offering a sermon recently on "Chicken Keeping as a Spiritual Practice"), I almost felt that my offered practice seemed, well, ordinary. My ordinary and boring practice is keeping a journal, and I admitted I don't even do a good job of it.
For years I struggled to keep written journals, starting as high school class assignments, and then as reflection tools. I'd invariably keep these up for a time, then quit writing. I do better now, more on than off, and I think part of the reason is technology.
I'm a left-handed writer, so writing more than a few words with a pen has always been a chore. Pushing the hand along smears the work. Fancy blank books have bindings that get in the way; spiral notebooks just hurt when you lay the hand on them.
I've learned that the keyboard is my tool of choice. I've figured out that the easiest way for me to journal is to write myself an email. I give it a title with the word Journal in it, and a gmail filter automatically routes these messages off to a special folder and marks them 'read'. These emails lay around, rarely read, as for me, most of the benefit of a journal is in the writing, not the reading.
Every now and then, though, I find I need to recover something. Rather than flipping through pages, I can use search to find key words. Often I get little surprises this way, for there may be similar items I've forgotten about: like entries about the constant rain my first spring in Berkeley. Then it is fun to go find the entries near that item, and recover a taste of that time.
I'm not going to pretend this made my journaling practice a deeply grooved habit, as there are still big stretches of time where I just am too busy or stressed to write. But this journaling method is accessible - I can jot a few sentences down into a draft email whenever I have a free moment near the computer. And I don't worry about losing my notebook.