Have You Ever Kept A Diary?

I love the way you felt the need to apologise to your diary for being too boring.

bill

Anyway, these days I just keep all my emails in lieu of a diary.

In the interests of unfree speech, can a moderator delete my inexplicable and unforgivable use of the word 'Euston'?

8 days into the new year, anyone keeping one this year. A real one that is, not a newfangled blog type thing.

Anyone? I still write in a spiral-bound notebook once or twice a week.

I used to keep one and fill it with emotional bullshit that was bothering me. They are so full of shit I can't even read them anymore. I started keeping one again but as I'm a working adult, it's more of an "I did this today and need to do that", with occasional notes on stuff I have read.

It helps to write in a journal when you're drunk because then it negates everything else that is in there. Not that I get drunk anymore.

the act of writing a diary always seems unappealing to me, for me at least, maybe on account of an egregiously lachrymose teenage diary i kept, but, sometimes when i re-read old e-mails i've sent, or letters i wrote, it seems like the merit of preserving minute stuff you'd totally otherwise forget - even, barbarically, just twitter-level amusing one-sentence incidents, etc - would justify the effort of keeping a diary.

i think instead i am just referring to old e-mails/texts for a window in to older periods of my life

maybe if i kept a diary i would stop outsourcing my introspection towards letter recipients

I love diaries and journals, what pisses me off is when people "feminize" the whole thing, like everyone who "writes stuff down" has maudlin personal issues or is self-absorbed. Of course in academia, whether you are a student or a professional, having a journal of some sort is necessary.

Why do I find it irritating? Because I used to have a Diaryland a long time ago, much of it was experimental writing or documentary writing or fiction and it was ruined by people wanting to talk about their personal pain or victimization.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512WCKPNEEL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

I really like reading diaries and journals of the famous, but they are usually of artists and detail their work schedule, how they get ideas, aesthetics and travel.

Andy Warhol's diaries are hilarious and a must read.

The memoirs, diary, and life of Private Jefferson Moses, Company G, 93rd Illinois Volunteers.

was your diaryland full of " "s and italics and you asking yourself questions, because if so i would rather read a sob story.

S*O*B story

http://nickdastoor.pitas.com/

I share other people's desire to read more Nicky D diaries, though I know that will not happen.

His stories of the past quite move me.

Well, they touch me.

I shouldn't have said that upthread. Maybe Diaryland is still good. There were just a few people on there who were a little weird. Plus I wasn't there to stalk teenage girls. I did fiction experiments.

I guess I'm too old for that now.

From roughly 1973 until 1982 I kept a journal. It included some diary-like material, but overall it was more like a diffuse set of essays concerning whatever was hanging off the end of my nose when I picked up the journal to write.

That sounds cool, actually. Probably a lot more interesting (to oneself) to read back 30 years later than "went to cinema today, drank a coke watched Star Wars" actual diary entries.

I've got a lot better at keeping paper written diaries. I was doing 750words for a while, but I found that that stopped me writing in a paper diary - and the thing is, I go back and read paper diaries, and find them useful, but would never look at my 750words again.

I can't read my teenage diary, it is so bad. Plus it is totally fake.

Prompted by cleaning my pit after a coivd tussle, and finding some old notebooks, I would be intrigued to know what percentage of ilxors keep/have kept some form of diary and what form they take etc?

I've tried various things over the years and it's always 'something' to look back, however low the velleity - to see how little one's obsessions change, but mainly for the notes I've taken from books. This kind of marginalia still creates a sense of possibility somehow.

Anyway, diaries?

yes, aged about 14-23 I kept it up sporadically, still have boxes of them in the garage, tell myself they are "for a project"

whenever I try to read them they send me off on a day of reflection / regret, not sth I really have time for.

ive kept a fairly regular diary for fifteen years. my early entries are scattered in notebooks, but somehow over the course of five or six laptops and one year of typewritten entries i have meticulously archived my diary into one long .txt file. i mostly make very brief, semi-fictional entries of daydreams, night-dreams, prayers, recovered memories or mundanities of the day. it's my safe place and i never feel pressured to write. the page always listens to me. sometimes i wish i could share it with everyone. i don't take many photos, so it serves as a better way to remember times, sometimes. every once in a few months i'll scroll back and read over entries and find myself surprised. i feel like i write in a fugue state or something most of the time. my favourite fiction is epistolary and i think it's a great format and a very healthy routine to maintain.

I tend to feel more like CaAL about my notebooks: such promise on the outside, but when I look at them, I just get the melancholy of lost futures - things I didn't do, writing projects never completed. Ah well. I guess I'll be glad they exist at some point.

All that said, I've been keeping an Evernote journal this year and have managed to keep it up every day. Kind of like maelin suggests, with the digital equivalent of scribbled notes, less thought out the better. I've been looking back and it's an interesting document. If you're me.