On January 1, 2025 I took up my favourite fountain pen and began my diary entry, as I have done every day since January 1, 1975. That’s fifty years of daily diary writing, with no more than two or three entries missed out of 18,263. This is my tribute to the achievement. I’m grateful to Fran for suggesting it as something worthy of recognition.
How did you start?
My first diary was a Christmas gift from my parents. I think I’d been given one in previous years but the idea of writing in it every day hadn’t caught on with me. For some reason, 1975 was different. I wrote an entry on January 1 and kept going. Day after day. Month after month. Through that year. And the next. And the next. Fifty years later, here I am.
What do you write about?
That’s not easy to answer, because it’s changed a lot over time. In the early years I mostly wrote about which lessons I’d had at school that day, which teachers I fancied, and what I’d watched on TV. There wasn’t much else going on in my life worth recording. It’s just as well, really. The pocket diaries I was using only had room for a few sentences each day.
1979 was a signal year. I turned eighteen. My father died. I passed my A-level exams and my driving test, and left home for university. Even at this early stage I was selective about what made it into my diary and what didn’t. There’s no mention of the many weeks my father spent in hospital thirty miles from home, the final time I saw him, or the early morning phone call that told us he’d died in the night. There’s not a word until the day of his funeral.
Friday April 27, 1979
Had the day off school today for Dad’s cremation at Anfield Crem. Afterwards, everyone came back to ours. Val and Dave [my cousins] had the baby with them — she’s lovely. Had quite an early night.
I wrote considerably more about studying for my exams. My diary is full of which topics I was revising, practice papers, and the exams themselves. My university place was secure, but I was keen to get good grades. I wasn’t disappointed. My diary for August 15 records my grades: Maths BU, Chemistry A1, Physics A, General Studies A. “Couldn’t quite believe it! Ammy and I went into town to get my [university] grant form, then after lunch we went on our bikes to see Auntie Ed. Auntie Beb came after tea.”
The most significant thing for me that year was leaving home for university. Apart from a six month period when I was on placement in Liverpool and occasional visits, I never looked back. The boundary between my old life and the new is marked by these consecutive entries.
Tuesday September 25, 1979
Mum and I went out to the village this morning. After lunch I had a shower and did my hair. Auntie Ed, Uncle George, Uncle Norman, and Auntie Beb came to tea. Saw Rickie Lee Jones on TV.Wednesday September 26, 1979
Off to Bradford this morning. Arrived about 1:00 and was met by some of the other students. Revis Barber Hall [my student accommodation] seems OK. Room is good, food is not bad and there seems plenty of it. Met a couple of blokes on our floor and a girl who’s doing pharmacy too.
Once I left home, it was clear I’d need more space for all I wanted to write. I bought bigger diaries and filled the pages with everything that was going on in my life. I recorded what I was doing — the lectures, lab sessions, presentations, homework, revision, and exams — but also how I was feeling, who I spent time with, and who I wanted to spend time with. New experiences. New people. Anything and everything flowed from me onto those pages. I didn’t want to write a diary. I needed to. Alongside the poetry I was writing at the time, this was how I explored and made sense of my life.
Transitioning from one diary to the next became a beloved ritual. In the final days of December, as well as recording my regular entries, I’d write a summary of the year as a whole. I’d highlight key moments and experiences, and review where I stood with important people in my life.
My diaries have always been handwritten and largely unadorned, but as the years went by I added occasional sketches. Room layouts, self-portraits, silly little drawing of friends and coworkers that even now can take me back to a specific moment in time. I’d sometimes tip in letters from friends or drafts of letters I’d sent. Despite being a keen photographer, I can think of only one photo I’ve ever included. (Hi, Dawn!)
I find I record less about how I’m feeling these days, because I process what’s going on for me in other ways. Primarily, that’s in conversation with friends and in my blogging. My diary entries are correspondingly shorter than they have been in the past, but that’s subject to change and there’ll always be things I find easier or more appropriate to explore in my journal than with other people or in a public blog post.
How much do you write?
This has varied a lot over the years. Between 1975 and 1980 my pocket week-to-a-view diaries provided only a very small box (6 x 2 cm) for each entry. I experimented with a somewhat larger diary in 1981 (9 x 10 cm day-to-a-page), before deciding a further upgrade was in order. For almost thirty years I used hardbound day-to-a-page diaries by W H Smith, moving from A5 (14.9 x 21 cm) up to A4 (21 x 29.7 cm) for many years, then back to A5 as I found I was no longer writing as much.
At the close of 2010 I was faced with a dilemma. I’d been using A5 day-to-a-page diaries for several years. This was fine but now and again I’d need to tip additional pages in. I was writing more than one A5 page each day, but not enough to warrant returning to A4. Taking a deep breath, I abandoned one-year-in-one-book diaries and moved into undated journals. Since January 1, 2011 I’ve used Moleskine Classic Notebooks (hardbound, black, ruled). At 11.5 x 18 cm they’re smaller than A5 but I can write as much or as little as I wish each day. When I reach the end of one journal I simply start another.
I’m on my thirty-eighth such journal. On average, it takes me 130 days to fill one, but that average is misleading. As the below graph shows, for the first 13 or 14 volumes I wrote around one and a half pages per day. This then increased fairly steadily over the next dozen journals until I was filling about four and a half pages per day (between February and March, 2020). Since then, I’ve become gradually less prolific, to the point where I’m currently writing around one page each day.
In general, I write more when there’s a lot going on for me or when there’s more drama, questions, opportunities, and issues to process and navigate. I fill fewer pages under calmer and less challenging circumstances. That’s not the only factor, however, and it would be naive to deduce from the numbers that my life has grown more and more sedate since 2020. There’s some truth there, but more fundamentally I’m writing less because I channel and explore things differently. Increasingly, I process things in conversations with my friends, and in my weekly blog posts here at Gum on My Shoe.
When and where do you write your diary?
I usually write my diary in the evening, but I keep it close to hand and often add to it when I’m out. This means a single day’s entry might comprise two or three separate updates, depending where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. I record the time and location if I’m not at home. During the Covid pandemic many entries opened with “Lunchtime, Fawdon Walk bench” because I’d routinely take my diary with me on my local walks. Saturday entries almost always begin “9:30 am, Costa Kingston Park.”
When I sit to write I’m usually recording that day’s events and feelings. That might seem obvious but for a long time I routinely wrote my diary for the previous day. So, I’d sit down on a Wednesday and write up my diary for Tuesday. That gave my entries a subtly different feel, in that I was looking back on what had happened from a new day’s perpective. The main disadvantage was it was easy to forget what had happened or how I was feeling if I was unable to write for any reason. Occasionally, I’d have to catch up on several days. I think the longest I ever left it was a week. There were times I’d dread the prospect of upcoming exciting or dramatic days because I was already behind with my diary. I’d sometimes take rough notes and write them up later when I had chance.
What do you write with?
In the early days I used whatever was to hand. That was usually a ballpoint pen, although I used a pencil on occasion. When I was about seventeen I bought a fountain pen and used that every day for many years. I used gel pens for a while but eventually returned to fountain pens. My favourite is the Lamy Safari with an extra fine nib. I’ve had several in a range of colours. My current is the gorgeous violet-blackberry model. I’ve experimented with different ink colours but always come back to black. It’s simple, elegant, and classic.
Why do you still do it?
I’ve asked myself that question at various times over the past fifty years. The first reason is that after so long, writing my diary is a habit it would be hard to break. It’s part of my daily routine. A part of me. Journaling is also central to how I process and make sense of my life. This is especially true if I’m feeling low, lost, or alone. Although I use my diary less for this kind of inner work than I used to, it’s the one place I get to be as honest as I choose to be without fear of upsetting other people or exposing myself to public gaze in my blog posts.
There’s also the very real fear of stopping. The following is taken from my 2023 article Communicate or Hide? The Creative Dilemma. I’m discussing my reasons for writing in general.
If I’m honest, I write because I’m scared to stop. It often feels to me as though writing is the only thing I have that has any real meaning, value, or purpose. If I stopped writing, what would be left? At different times, I’ve thought about stopping my personal journal. I’ve certainly considered giving up blogging, or at least taking a break from it. In both cases, the very routine — daily journal entries and weekly blog posts — imposes an imperative to continue. Were I to interrupt either, I’d find it very difficult to pick up again at some later date. And so I continue, as much from fear as anything else.
There’s another aspect to this too. My diaries comprise a record of and testament to who I’ve been throughout my adult life. More than anything else they capture and evoke who I have been and who I am. This aspect has taken a greater focus this year as I’ve begun to think about end of life planning and my personal legacy.
Do you reread them?
I used to take certain volumes down from the shelf on a semi-regular basis. I rarely do so these days, but there are exceptions. I quoted extensively from my diaries in High Tide, Low Tide, the book Fran and I wrote about our mutually supportive friendship. I often reference my diary entries in my blogging, especially over the past couple of years where I’ve shared increasingly about my own life and situation. Earlier this year I revisited my diaries for 1983 and 1984 for a post about attending the Glastonbury Festival . The experience affected me deeply, leading me to explore wider aspects of what we remember and fail to remember. Being reminded of things we’d forgotten can be perilous. As I noted, “what we forget is important, too.”
Journaling allows me to release thoughts and feelings onto the page so I no longer have to carry them around with me. They can be retrieved, but there’s no imperative to do so. Opening a diary — including one’s own — is a perilous undertaking. My 1983 diary contains much more than my three-day weekend at the festival. It was one of the most intense years in my life to date, which is saying plenty. Engaging with it now is not without its challenges, as warm as most of the memories are. I’m content for some things to remain unremembered. My diaries serve their purpose even if they remain on the shelf, unread.
It was interesting to note how I still have many of the same hang-ups and insecurities I had forty years ago, though there are others I recognise I’ve grown out of or have learned to reframe.
What will happen to them?
Until this year I’d never given thought to what would happen to my diaries after I die. The question gained more traction when I began thinking about my personal legacy. I haven’t come to a decision yet. Do I want my diaries, with all the events, doubts, fears, excitements, crises, and private musings they contain, to be read by those who’ve known me partially, as we each know one another?
Our friends — how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often not.
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
On the other hand, I’m not certain I want all that personal history to be lost after my death. There are established journal repositories such as The Great Diary Project which I want to check out before reaching a decision. Hopefully, I have a while in which to explore my options. In the meantime, I’ll keep adding to my journal collection. One page at a time. One day at a time.
Further Reading
The Power of Journaling [blog] by David B. Feldman.
STOP: 4 reasons why you shouldn’t destroy your diaries [blog] by Cheryl Werber
The Great Diary Project was launched in 2007 by two diary devotees, Dr Irving Finkel and Dr Polly North. In 2009, the project was fortunate to find its permanent home, at Bishopsgate Institute. The project rescues, archives and makes publicly available a growing collection of more than 19,000 unpublished diaries. We are the largest of our kind in Europe.
The American Diary Project was founded in October of 2022 with one simple vision: Rescue diaries and preserve the writing of everyday Americans.
Photo by Alex Lvrs at Unsplash.
No comments:
Post a Comment