I’m thinking of keeping a diary, an old fashioned kind on real dead trees. Maybe as a form of therapy or something, I guess.
Do any of you keep diaries? Or did you find them a waste of time, or stopped when you got out of high school (I know I’m a bit late to this diary thing, heh).
I used to blog, but I stopped because it got tiresome, and I felt like I had to entertain my readers… this diary is going to be different. It’s going to be a very personal, private thing, something for myself.
I kept a diary for about 2-3 years from senior year of hs to 2nd year of college.
It was just my thoughts on the world, a bit of relection, some artwork, and a bit about my day and life. I used it as therapy pretty much as getting over a fear of Death that I’d have- by trying to leave something that someone could discover and read about me sorta thing (yeah, yeah, but i was in high school, i was a cheesy angsty kid). What ended up happening is the first book is a great chapter of my life showing my thoughts when i was in hs and the troubles i had, and then going into college and learning more about my self, so it’s a great book that kinda details my changes in thoughts through a very critical period in my life. The next volume though took place the end of that year in college to the next, and invovled me breaking up w/ my sig. other and all at the time, and its something I don’t really want to read as again it starts out with one view in my life, and by the end it’s completely different, except instead of angsty to happy, it goes the other way. Again I keep both as just good reminders of how I changed and all, but I dont really write in them any more just because… i realized I only tended to write in them when i was scared, worried or such, and as I slowly got over that, I didn’t need them anymore. They did their job of therapy if you will.
I’ve thought about it, but I have no idea what I would write about. I just don’t think my daily life is interesting enough to write accounts of it that would be of any value.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: And the same goes for blogging, which I think is kind of the modern successor to diaries.
I’ve been keeping a diary sporadically for several years; mainly musing to myself about spiritual matters, my thoughts on important events, quotes and passages from books and poems I like to have handy ("'Tis better to be cheerful than gloomy, whether fair or foul betide" has done wonders to get me through the last several months), random short stories that’ll never see the light of day - basically I use it to talk to myself about stuff that I can’t talk to other people about 'cause they’ll think I’m nuts.
ETA - I was also using it as a dream diary until I discovered that my dreams are so indescribably weird it’s probably better to just let them sink back into my subconscious unacknowledged. Let’s just say singing disembodied Doberman heads floating in the sky would be the least strange element in my dream life.
I have a LiveJournal to coordinate/chat with local friends, to geek out about theater and literature (mostly Shakespeare), and to post things I enjoy that I think other people might like. (The recent PR efforts of Rod Blagojevich, for example.)
I also keep a handwritten diary, which I use to try to sort through why I feel the way I do about things, whether I should try to change those feelings, and how. Often I don’t realize why I’m unhappy or upset until I make myself write out the specifics, and then I can try to identify cause and effect and fix things.
The interesting thing is that we know a lot of the minutiae of daily life (trivial stuff like what a packet of smokes cost, how long it took to get the tram from one side of town to the other, what Grandma thought the first time she saw a Movie, etc) in Earlier Times precisely because someone wrote down stuff that seemed mundane and unimportant at the time.
But like you, I really don’t know what I’d put in a diary or blog, so at this stage I haven’t bothered.
I’ve kept one for over 30 years, at some times more assiduously than others. I’ll guess it’s at over 150 volumes though I haven’t tracked that in the last decade. Thoughts, feelings, drawings, outlines, poetry, dreams, shopping lists, drafts of letters, calories, travelogue. Nothing profound, just talking to myself, which helps me decide what I want to say to other people and what I don’t, and also helps me have a better sense of where some of my emotional reactions are coming from.
I tried keeping a journal a couple times, mainly because people would give me these really nice, bound journals with beautifully textured papers and covers. So I gave it a shot.
I had a really hard time with it, and I eventually figured out that I didn’t know who my audience was. If all I was going to write was “today I woke up, went to the gym, and went to school. I went to class and studied. Afterwards I came home, had dinner, studied, watched TV, and went to sleep”, it would be pretty boring. But to elaborate, I’d need an audience, and writing for an audience that is comprised entirely of just me wasn’t really enough motivation, or something. But to write for others, I felt weird because I couldn’t figure out ‘others who?’ I write a lot for work, and usually once I determine my audience things flow pretty easily. What I’d write for one reader is very different from what I’d write for another.
I just never got into it enough to find it an enjoyable, cathartic experience.
I’ve kept a diary every day since I turned eight. Mostly it’s “Up at 6:30. Walked to work. 7-11 for coffee. Saw XXXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXXX. Emails w/xxxxxxxx,xxxxxxxx,xxxxxxxxxx. Lunch with XXXXXX at McD’s. Walk home. Got TV Guide. Watched new Big Bang, listened to Czech Evita. Good sleep.”
My life is not very interesting, but it’s sure been chronicalled.
I’ve had the same experience as Corkboard. I don’t know who I’m writing it for. If I’m the audience then why do I need to write it down? I already know it. I also had to write constantly for work and it wasn’t relaxing - it was just another chore. I’m very private about some things and I hate the idea of someone reading my most private thoughts so I’d rather they stay tucked away in my head.
When I was 8 I sold my older sister’s diary to the boys for a quarter. Maybe that’s why I’m so paranoid.
I’ve been writing a diary going on 23 years now. I write every day, what I eat, who I saw, who I talked to, what I did, and my hopes, prayers and frustrations.
I can’t tell you how uplifting it is to go back 10 or 20 years and review where I was in my head. In many ways it’s amazing how petty and trivial I was then, cheers me up to realize how much I’ve grown ( I hope).
bolding mine- in addition to my comments above, this pretty much sums it up for me. If I just catalogued the trivia of my daily life, I’d be afraid I’d look back on it and realize (i) how little my daily life has changed, and (ii) how trivial my days really are.
About a month or two ago I started keeping a journal. I write everyday and it has become a form of therapy for me. I write about a page or two a day in a beautiful leather journal. It helps me to sort out the jumble of thoughts that lie in my head and I feel more in control of everything after I have written. It also helps me to rationalise certain things and to make difficult decisions. Its not so much about writing about things I have done in my day…more about the thoughts, worries and excitment in my head.
I kept a diary or journal off and on all throughout school until I went to university and then stopped because I couldn’t be bothered to write anymore about the meaningless things i was doing in my day. And I had to write so many essays I was all written out by the end of the day. I used to pretend I was writing to someone, or that my diaries would be published when I die…but that became meaningless as i grew up.
Now I couldn’t be without it. I look forward to writing. It really helps me a lot. I’m honest and truthful with myself and I hope it is making me a stronger person.
In addition to all of this I have always, since I was 11 kept a diary of what I eat and weigh everyday and how much exercise I’ve done. Thats all part of problems I have but its become a habit I need to lose. Mind you, I love looking back at the things I ate when I was 11 in comparison to now that im 24.
I’ve kept some sort of journal off and on since I was 13 or so. I have very rarely completed one; what I have today is a pile of ruled books, each with 10-50 pages or so of random venting.
I rarely give any kind of account of “what I did today.” More often, it’s how I’m feeling about life right now and what my major worries and hopes are. If I feel the need to sort out my thoughts, I’ll journalize. If life is going smoothly, my journal can sit for months untouched.
Other times, my journal doubles as a day-planner/to do list. I guess I just find it handy to have something to write on at all times.
I kept a daily diary for a few busy years when I was the mom of a young child, in those nice cloth bound journals. How busy the days were! Then the last couple journals got awfully whiney, and pretty dull, so I tossed them and just kept the most interesting one. I’d like to start keeping the kind where I write my innermost thoughts, etc. but frankly I wouldn’t want anyone to read it after I died.
I was thinking about this a while back; I had just finished reading a book (King, Kaiser, Czar) based on the diaries and letters of a variety of famous personages. Now, with email and phone calls, etc., we’ve lost a lot of the day-to-day things that make up our civilization.
I have a daybook, which has room for two or three lines per day. That suits me nicely; I can jot down what I did, or some thought I had, or what someone said, and then I’m out of room! So it fits perfectly, since I don’t feel like I have to write some epic every day.
Yes, I keep one. No, you can’t read it. I only write in it for my own reading.
I write down my dreams and nightmares, my ambitions, my feelings. I glue in newspaper and magazine clippings, ticket stubs, and the occasional noteworthy program. I also glue in pressed flowers and botanicals. Lots of stuff goes in my diary.
I kept a Livejournal for a while, but I hate trying to keep up with it and my friends on LJ. So I pretty much quit it.