Last Tuesday at 9:14 a.m., I watched a $1,283 NQ long bleed to $317 while TradingView blinked like it was mocking me. I kept a Vigil's free trading audit open while I reviewed the week, because memory lies and the log does not. I had a clean chart. I had a clean idea. I had a dirty process. That was the problem. the night I stopped trusting memory I used to think I could remember every bad trade if it hurt enough. That was a lie I told myself after a good day. By the next morning, the details were already foggy. The entry felt smarter. The exit felt unlucky. The loss felt smaller. That is how traders keep the same wound open for years. The first time I built a real trading journal google sheets reddit thread was the same week I blew up a tiny Apex eval on MES. Not a dramatic blow-up. Just a slow leak of bad entries, sloppy adds, and one late exit that turned a manageable red into a stupid red. I had the platform data. I had screenshots.…