HOW TO DOCUMENT YOUR LIFE (8-STEP GUIDE)

Documenting your life is an act of devotion.
A way of remembering yourself in real time.
A practice of honoring the subtle, the mundane, the miraculous—everything that makes your interior world worth witnessing.

You don’t need a perfect routine, an aesthetic desk, or a new camera.
You just need attention, a little structure, and the willingness to show up for your own unfolding.

Here are eight simple steps to help you begin:

1. Slow Down and Notice

Before you can document your life, you have to actually be in it.
Let yourself notice the textures of your days—what you’re thinking, feeling, learning, grieving, growing through.

Presence is the first archive.

2. Choose Your Tools

Pick what feels natural: your phone, a notebook, a voice memo app, scraps of paper, screenshots, or a mix of everything.
Your tools don’t have to be fancy—they just have to feel honest.

3. Create a Daily Capture

Every day, gather one thing:
A photo, a sentence, a thought, a dream, a conversation snippet, a fear, a joy, a question.
Just one.
Over time, these small captures become a map of who you’ve been.

4. Build Your Folders

Organize your digital life the way you organize your emotional one:
By season, project, relationship, place, or theme.
Let your folders evolve as you do.

This is the skeleton of your archive.

5. Weekly Curate & Reflect

Pick one day a week—Monday, Sunday, the new moon—and revisit what you captured.
What stands out?
What changed you?
What wants to be shared and what wants to stay private?

Curation is a form of self-listening.

6. Give Your Stories a Home

Different layers of your life belong in different spaces:

Longform reflections → newsletters, blogs, Substack
Short insights → Threads, Twitter, notes-app confessions
Photo collections → Instagram
Messy, real-time thoughts → TikTok, voice notes, vlogs

Think of each platform as a room in your house—each one holds a different truth.

7. Share from Embodiment, Not Performance

Documenting your life isn’t about being seen—
It’s about being known, first by yourself and then by others.

Share what feels alive.
Share what feels real.
Share what feels like it chose you.

8. Archive Your Becoming

Every month or season, create a “chapter” of your life:
A folder, a reel, a short essay, a collage, a playlist.
Something that marks: I was here. I was changing. I was becoming.

The archive is the gift you’re making for the future version of you.

Your life is a story worth keeping.
Your voice is an artifact.
Your memories are a lineage you’re building in real time.

Call for Submissions

Belasprii is opening its next submission window soon — a space for artists, seekers, storytellers, and memory-keepers to share the worlds they’re documenting.

Submissions open soon and will close on 2/2.
If you want to be the first to know when the portal opens, subscribe and you’ll get the announcement directly.

Your story belongs here.