Diaries...Part 2

“A well kept diary is one of the most interesting productions of human industry. The procession of a faithful record of two or three years of our life, especially if it be a period of moral or intellectual struggle and development, or of both combined, is an ample and abiding reward for the steadiness of effort required. All well-written biography is delightful and profitable reading. Autobiography is by far the most so, and our own becomes to us in after-years peculiarly pleasing and useful. We change so much and we forget so much, while still remaining the same self, that only they have put themselves on paper can understand the charm of renewing our acquaintance with our long ago selves.” - Rev. William Sutton, February 1886


Diary-keeping ought to be a faintly disreputable, subversive activity. Tell anyone you're a diarist and they will clam up.” – Alan Taylor, The Sunday Herald, 2nd Jan 2005


Unfortunately, with this blog going down the drain, so is the personal diary writing. Having a diary does help when you are struggling with part of your life. Instead the part I’m struggling with is to keep up the diary writing. I calculated that if I wrote two pages a day, every day, I would finish my first Moleskin by mid to end March. However, I have left out about two weeks worth of entries if I added up all the missed days together. Thinking about this making me wonder why I even keep a diary any more. This question might be significant for a person who has been keeping a diary for years and years, maybe in decades, but for a person who is about to embark on the boat of life through the big wide world and leaving the last crumbs of childhood, is a big transition and one that should be documented, as it truly is something that happens once in your life, (or would you count your future children’s transitions as you guide them along? A question to later think about.)


So what happened to this lack of productivity? Have I turned my attentions to other interesting things and have I gotten bored with the writing already? One thing that might counter balance this issue is to refresh why you started a diary. Was it for therapeutic means when times were hard and now you’ve overcome the issues and are fine now? Was it for recording memories for your children to read over? Was it for a future novel and the hope that people may read it and you might become famous? My aim for my diary was to:


• Become more productive and less time wasted;


• Complete the current moleskin in a year;


• Write in order to find what I really want in life such as career-wise.


With the lack of writing, comes the lack of reading as well and it just generally seems that it all falling apart. One probably balances the other; with writing comes the after effects reading. Without reading, understanding grammar, and having respect for generally literacy you can’t fully write to your full potential...I may be wrong of course.


One other technique to combat this it to just get on with doing it. I have been saying that I should go to bed earlier and actually, getting up hasn’t been any easier with doing that. When I do go to bed, I usually write what happens that day or I would read, but in actual fact when I do go to bed early I’d usually write or read and by the time I’ve finished it’ll be late again so I wouldn’t bother anymore.


Another way to help is to keep entries shorter and straight to the point and not to try and ‘catch up’ on days that are missed. If they are missed and they were of personal or even humorous significance, they can be mentioned.


Diary writing is not meant to be a chore, nor did I aim to make it one and unfortunately it has. I now have to ‘reinvent’ myself and read more to become enthusiastic again by the writer who first influenced me again to write.


It all seems a bit too ironic that a tool to combat unproductiveness and to overcome life problems has indeed done the opposite. Now we just got to use it again to rise above the problems and head it straight on.“Where diarists are concerned, discretion is not the better part of valour. The best diarists are those who seem not to care what they say or how they portray themselves. Rather they live in a bubble of their own blowing, oblivious to what others think of them, suspended in a state of sublime self-consciousness. It is as if they are talking to the mirror, unburdening to another self all their cares and woes and prejudices. It is a form of narcissism.