Journal with dated entries instead of chapters?

Question

I'd like to use LaTeX to write a journal. It would be in most respects like a regular book, but with dated instead of numbered chapters. For example, instead of:

• Chapter 1 - Project Setup
• Chapter 2 - Beginning Experiments

I'd like:

• November 15 2020 - Project Setup
• November 16 2020 - Beginning Experiments

This does not seem like a typical setup for LaTeX and I cannot find any mention of LaTeX used in this way.

How do I go about configuring LaTeX to do this?

---

Clarifying what I am hoping to achieve. As in the question title, I'd like to have chapters in this document, but instead of numbered chapters, have dates. So, for a regular book chapter that looks like the following:

I'd like to change "Chapter 1" to say "November 15, 2020", and same for subsequent chapters. Then in the table of contents, instead of:

the numerals "1" and "2" would instead be replaced with the dates themselves.

Answer 1

Here's a starter. You'll need to customize the page headers and footers to your liking.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{titlesec,titletoc}
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
  {\normalfont\huge}
  {{\itshape\thechapter}}
  {20pt}
  {\Huge\bfseries}
\titlecontents{chapter}
  [0pt]
  {\addvspace{1pc}\normalfont}
  {%
   \contentsmargin{0pt}{\itshape\thecontentslabel}\*\bfseries
  }
 {\contentsmargin{0pt}}
 {\hfill\thecontentspage}
 [\addvspace{.5pc}]
\newcommand{\datedchapter}[2]{%
  \renewcommand{\thechapter}{#1}%
  \chapter{#2}%
}
\begin{document}
\frontmatter
\tableofcontents
\mainmatter
\datedchapter{November 15, 2020}{Project Setup}
\begingroup\let\clearpage\relax % just to make a smaller picture, remove!
\datedchapter{November 16, 2020}{Beginning Experiments}
\endgroup % remove!
\end{document}