Nobody here gives you a task list. Someone has a problem, they tell you about it, and what you do next is yours to work out. A grieving woman mentions her husband kept something in the shed; the shed is where you would expect a shed to be; what is in it is not marked.
The journal records problems you have been told about, rumours you have heard but not confirmed, people you have met and places you have found. It updates when you learn something, not when you complete a step.
Some of it is timed. If someone asks you to do something before dark, dark is a real time and the answer changes after it. Nothing is failed forever — but the story does not wait, and what you find later may be different from what you would have found in time.
The first journey starts with the letter you arrived holding, and with the crying you can hear near the village well.