I’ve Kept a Daily Journal Now for a Full Year — But I Did It All Wrong
By: Em Unravelling
Tags: Memories, Development, Self, Personal Essay, Diary

I started my diary last November, on what was almost a whim. I did it because I found a cute diary in T.K. Maxx and I liked its thick creamy pages and solid cover. I did it because I felt like all of my lived days were blending into each other and when I looked back at them, I could not separate their strands and I didn’t like that feeling. I did it because I thought it might slow the rush of time down a bit.

Mostly, though, I did it because my grieving, widowed father told me one day that his absolute favourite thing to do in the world was to sit and read through the diaries his partner had kept throughout her life (before she died suddenly last year and left him, far too soon). He said “She writes about a trip to the beach and what we saw there, and I can fill all the rest of it in myself. It’s a whole memory that I forgot I had, but the diaries give me access to it.”

I thought I’d like to leave that sort of record behind me.

So I started writing one. I did exactly what my dad told me his partner had always done: I wrote short fact-based notes at the end of each day, detailing who I’d seen and where I’d been and the activities I’d filled my hours with. And at first, I felt like that was just right. The brief notes were all I needed.

As of last month, I have kept it up for the whole year. That’s the longest I’ve managed to maintain any sort of journal routine since I was a teenager. Each day, shivering in my cold bedroom and mocked by its dead, useless radiator, I’ve made myself write with an old bitten biro in my pretty journal and within a couple of lines, rounded up the experiences of the past 24 hours, jotting their bare facts onto the page.

The thing is, though, that after March swept the world into our varying degrees of quarantine, I didn’t actually do very much during my days. And it turns out that a constant litany of “worked from home; made food for everyone; went for a run; did a bit of yoga” is not only the opposite of entertaining but, predictably, serves as no sort of memory-jogger either when I leaf back through it. I could have had a rubber stamp made and saved myself the shivery effort.

I wrote in this very publication during the summer that my ongoing diary was “dry as dust to read”, and that description remains accurate. But at the time, I thought that was fine. I thought it was enough. I also wrote, back then, that I’d be able to “flesh the dry facts out later”. What was I talking about? Where and when would I have done that?

Oh, the naive confidence of my summer self.

Yes, it’s useful to be able to note that we went to Scotland on the second weekend of June, not the first. Yes, when I read that entry and the list of the places we visited I remember afresh the ceaseless rain as we passed the border sign and the fact that (contrary to the Proclaimers’ mournful yodeling) there was no sunshine on Leith. But how was I actually feeling, that day in the breeze on Arthur’s Seat? Where was my head at? I have no idea. I have only the vaguest impression of myself.

And that’s how I know I’ve been doing it all wrong. I want to remember the feelings as well as the facts. I want to look back and know that there were days on which I woke up gasping in terror from a nightmare but found that my mood was inexplicably sunny all the same, as though I’d fought and won a battle in my sleep.

I’d like to remember the days when I argued fiercely with my husband and my children all separately grated on me and I felt that I could cheerfully turn my back on the lot of them and drive as far as my fuel tank would allow.

I’d love to remember the golden days where I dared not look directly at my happiness, for fear it might burn a hole in my retinas. And I’d like to remember how I filled my mind on the colourless transparent in-between days when very little happened at all.

So next year, I’ll carry on with the diary, but with one vital change: it’s going to include moods, feelings, and free-flowing opinions as well as the dry stuff. I probably won’t write it every day; I think every week would suffice, for such a general overview. No one’s going to read it, after all.

I haven’t yet found the diary I’ll be using (browsing bookshop shelves isn’t exactly a frequent pastime at the moment), but I’m on the lookout. It’ll come to me. And when it does, I’m going to splurge and splurge onto those fresh pages.

It feels like a revelation, of sorts. Which means that my dry diary-keeping helped me grow after all.