I was reading a work of history and it mentioned a 18th century man who keep a voluminous diary, which was one source of material for the work.
Which made me wonder why he did so. I’ll admit I have never had any urge to keep a diary. But I’m aware many people do so. So I’m asking why
Is it to keep a record of your life? Do you record events or is it more about recording your thoughts and feelings? Do you plan to go back and read entries from years ago? Do you go back like this? Or is it the act of organizing your thoughts to be written down that matters and rereading them later is not issue? Or are you recording them for some future reader? If so, do you have a specific reader in mind or are you recording things for history in general?
The same reason anyone does something like sing to themselves, or play musical instruments for themselves, or draw for themselves, or paint for themselves, or any other pursuit for internal pleasure. It brings them joy or emotional balance in their life.
Sometimes I’ll start writing something here. Either a reply or a brand new thread, and for one reason or another, I’ll decide not to post it before I finish writing. What’s interesting is how often I think to myself “I’m just going to finish typing this anyway”. If I’m asking a question, often just the act of typing it out will bring me to the answer, and if I keep going, I’ll end up with a better understanding of it. OTOH, sometimes I just feel like I’m getting something off my chest.
In either case, whenever that happens I think to my self 'ahhh, this is why people keep diaries". I can see how doing that helps people process the day’s events.
I’ve kept a journal (a diary implies more regularity than has often been the case) for over fifty years. I love the very act of writing – I’m also a writer of long eloquent letters, waning now because most of my correspondents are dead. I write with vintage fountain pens on excellent paper.
These days my journal has become a morning ritual; over my first cup of tea, before dawn, I record the time, date, temperature outside, what I remember I did yesterday, what I’m planning to do today, at minimum, and then may include musings of any nature at all. I write in order to think things through, to reflect upon people and events, and really anything going through my head.
My journals are a little treasure house of personal historical data as it turns out. What we went through when the barn burned down, my trip to visit relatives, what I used to think about religion. I like reading old journals back to my thirties or so – before that they become increasingly jejune and unbearably self-indulgent. I’ll probably burn them before I die.
I keep a diary for many reasons, but one of them is to constantly check myself for bias. I try to capture my feelings as of a particular moment in time (“Here’s how I feel about my job/family/girlfriend as of August 13, 2015”) so in the future I can look back and have an accurate witness of how I felt about something and see how I may have been distorting or not-distorting things. I can also keep detailed track of many things, such as knowing how much money I had in my 401k as of age 25.
It also serves as a way to see how I’ve progressed in something. I read the super-devout Christian things I wrote 15 years ago, for instance, to see what my mindset was then and how I’ve changed.
I do when I travel, particularly if I’m alone. It’s partly just a lightweight, low-tech thing I can bring along to fill in time while waiting for the train or bus, or to have something to do in the evenings if I don’t have anyone to hang out with. But I do go back to them, especially if I’m planning another trip to some of the same places – it’s helpful to have a record of what I did last time, and what I liked or didn’t like about it.
Assuming no one I know will read it… but…
I sometimes think that I should just give my family my login and password to The Dope, maybe in my will, and say “Here, you can read all my posts and get a feel for what your husband/dad was like.”
I can guarantee that none of them will bother. And that’s good; I want them focused on their own lives, not mine. On the future, not the past.
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[So, how ‘re my prognosticatin’ skills? Are Blade and Pants and Jazmo actually reading this? If so, I’m impressed… but quit before you get bored.]
I had to keep one for a semester of English class in high-school. It was an assignment. We had to turn them in every Friday, and the teacher would read them.
I thought it was Wrong, and Creepy As Hell then, and I still do. I just scribbled Gibberish, for the most part. Kinda like here, I guess.
I’m sure a diary or journal is therapeutic to many people, or just a method of gathering their thoughts. I don’t keep a regular journal, but as a writer, I do find it helpful to jot down my thoughts following an event that has affected me in an emotional way, the death of long ago friend, for example. I found out, long after the fact, of the death of a girl I knew in high school, someone who had been special to me. Though we never had a serious relationship, I always thought she might be someone I would meet again. (The song “Windy” by the Association always reminds me of her. She was that girl.) To find out she had died at a young age, 35, many years ago, saddened me, and I wrote down my thoughts and memories of her. I still have it, somewhere, in my computer files. I’ll come across it occasionally, re-read it, and think of her fondly.
So weird. The only time I didn’t write was after my Daddy died. I was in the denial stage way longer than was healthy. I had had two very traumatic events within a year. So I was just gone.
I was well passed those stages when I picked up the pen again.
I’ve never kept a diary, but I keep several journals that document my various long-term to lifelong projects. Even though the impetus and the nucleus is technical, these journals invariably record and reflect aspects of my personal life and situations, as well.
The journals are invaluable in many ways; often to bring back how a particular job is best done, but also to check how things actually went five or ten or 25 years ago, instead of my faulty memories, and, most satisfyingly, to find patterns in masses of long-term data. They improve my game, massively. Nothing makes stuff stick in my head better than writing it out.
But the journals are also heartening to read almost as prose, illustrating where I was, how things went and where, or how far, I ended up getting. The meagre beginnings, the hard work, the progress, the dead ends and the break throughs, in a setting of my personal life in different places, with various people.
I take a lot of notes for my work. I prefer to write them than type them so I purchased a tablet computer. It’s great to help me organize my projects. I’ve got 14 folders of stuff going on. One is a journal, another Art-Freeform. I also have one for dreams. I have 6 different ones for work, for different stuff going on. And a couple for projects at my house.
In ye olden tymes, there wasn’t any way to search through your old emails, medical records or online bank and credit card statements, so there were some pragmatic reasons to keep a log of practical matters. And if you’re already making those kinds of records, then I think it’s easy to imagine that someone with a literary turn of mind might add other thoughts that cross their mind.
Looking at Pepys’s diary for July 23, 1664, he starts with a record of his business conversations at the office. (And then he ends with feeling guilty about visiting women of negotiable affections.)
