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Keeping a diary?

G

gail2

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 2
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just wondered if others keep a diary likeme. Have done one for 40 years from when i was in a secure mentalhealth unit on section and very ill to meeting the OH (happy days indeed) They are even mentioned in my will going to y nephew who wants them Mind you have said that they are only to be read when i have passed
Just curious to see others keep one
gail
 
for me its a record of how i feel
 
gail2 said:
just wondered if others keep a diary likeme. Have done one for 40 years from when i was in a secure mentalhealth unit on section and very ill to meeting the OH (happy days indeed) They are even mentioned in my will going to y nephew who wants them Mind you have said that they are only to be read when i have passed
Just curious to see others keep one
gail
Click to expand...
My mam done one for years, I said to her will be nice to read when she was no longer with us. When emptied house could only find one, a thought the old bugger has put them out
 
I tried keeping diaries when I was a kid. My problem was that I was using those diaries that are already divided into days. There were of course loads of days when nothing of note happened, having nothing to write I would end up with endless blank pages and give up. Of course what I should have been doing is using a blank notebook and writing in the date whenever I had something to report. As for the point, you are creating a personal historic record. Often you need to refer back to something that happened and it is useful to know when. I now keep a diary of my piano practice. This has been referred to as the book of excuses because often it is an account of the times when I was too busy to practice.
 
I don’t write a diary but I think of two reasons to write one
- for the writer. I can see some value in “dumping your thoughts and feelings” rather than letting them fester inside. I rarely fester but when things get on top of me, I can write them down to logically arrange my thoughts and, often, come up a plan of actions to move forward. But most days, I can do this internally.
- for the reader. I don’t think my life (or thoughts) are interesting enough day by day for anyone to read. Things happen on a longer timescale and not regularly enough to write often. I just have random thoughts on random days which may appear in letters (more like emails, nowadays) or social media posts or just conversations I have.

I find it weird when someone says they see no point in anyone writing a diary but understand it may not be something for them (and me) to keep.
 
I started a daily journal in July 2018. The reason being Mr Eggy was going through a lot with his heart problems. I was making notes in an average page a week appointment diary, re his symptoms/meds/ exercise whether he had angina etc. There wasn’t enough room some days so I bought a page a day journal. To this day I write in it every single day. It’s usually boring stuff, weather, what we had for tea, books I’m reading. Things I watch on the telly. Funny things the grandkids do or say. I don’t write anything personal, I may write how I feel about what’s going on in the world. Anyone could read them and I wouldn’t be embarrassed. I wrote a lot during Covid, I recorded the cases and the deaths, the rules we had to adhere to etc. Some days are more exciting than others, when we’re on holidays or on one of our hikes. When we toured Europe for six weeks in 2019 I filled every page for those weeks. I like to look back sometimes, I’ll pick one randomly from the shelf and turn to the date we’re on and see what happened that year. Usually not much different from any other year TBF! But sometimes I come across things I’d totally forgot about it and that’s nice.
I also staple tickets in, for shows, gardens, etc.
 
I used to write a diary on our holidays, they were really more like a travelogue, describing the scenery, what we did, saw, visited and ate. I would then print them out on card with pictures interspersed and comb bind them. More recently I've done "Photobooks" - more like a photo album with comments and menus but professionally printed and hard backed. They come in handy sometimes to show friends if they are going to visit the same place. I think when we are too old to travel we can read them.
 
I don't keep one, but I can see how they could be useful, as a memory aid, to record events, to log feelings/emotions, etc, I can also see that it could be very cathartic. Not for everyone, but it you enjoy it and find it useful then go for it....
 
I've tried a few times, but either I couldn't think of anything interesting to write, or I would read back and think "what a load of self indulgent, boring claptrap" and promptly rip that page out!
I don't like revisiting the past, so I wouldn't particularly want to read back and see what I'd done or how I was feeling years ago. And I don't think anyone else would be interested in reading about me after I'm dead.
 
My mother wrote diaries from when she was about 12/13 to her death at 83, though very sporadically in her later years. Her instructions were that they should be burnt after she died without being read, which we of course adhered to (most of them were written in Pitman shorthand which would have taken a while to transcribe anyway) but I often regret missing out on what must have been a fascinating slice of social history from the 1930s to 2007.
 
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