Wednesday 27 January 2016

MEET THE DIARIES


So this post was scheduled for the beginning of January, and for once I'd snapped the necessary pictures AND edited them. Yet, despite this active willingness to be more organised I put my blog on the back burner once again. But! The amount of essay writing, and reading I have to do this semester is mind blowing, and when I'm under a lot of pressure I tend to give myself a kick up the butt, and narrow my focus down to the important things in life. Like this blog... and my degree, of course. Silver linings! 

Keeping a diary/journaling is a HUGE part of my life. I write about my day in my diary every night, and though it can seem ridiculous, and sometimes pointless, this little tradition is important to me. Being able to look back on the way I thought/how I felt in years gone by is priceless. Say I wanted to know what was going on in my life/in my mind on June 22nd 2014... all I'd have to is pull out my 2014 diary, and flip to that page. Now this obsessive cataloguing probably doesn't help my nostalgic tendencies (although I've managed to restrain that particular devilish emotion recently) but I can't imagine my life without my daily dose of diary... 

I think most people attempt to journal when they're kids? But the habit doesn't stick for everyone, and a lot of people give up, or write sporadic entries every couple of months/years. I'd kept a bunch of random half filled notebooks with diary entries from the age of 7 upwards - accompanied with some pretty interesting illustrations - up until a few months ago when I finally decided to throw them away! (They were taking up space, and while yes they were nice to flick through every couple of years I didn't see the point in keeping them.) 

I was 10 when I decided to start a diary, and stick to it. We'd watched a movie in school about a girl in the Victorian era, and watching her write in her diary is basically what inspired me! This blue diary pictured below is the one I wrote in from the ages of 10-12. I still love the  HP stickers tbh :') 


Eventually I started buying day to day diaries as well as empty journals? There was a point in my life where I was writing a short diary entry every night in the day to day diary, and then much lengthier entries in my journal once or twice a week. I don't know why I carried on like this for so long, but I guess it's because I thought the restricted entry length in the day to day diaries couldn't convey all my emotions? ANYWAY. I stopped doing that last year, and though I still have a half finished journal (the green Great Gatsby one with gold writing) I no longer pressure myself to write in it more regularly. I know that if I ever need a super private place to write 7/8 pages of whatever inner conflict I'm struggling with, that's what I can turn to. Until then, I'm content with short, and sweet daily entries. :) 


So the bundle of diaries pictured above are the day to day type. Some of them are week to page, others two days by page, and some day to page. The notebooks below are my 'journals'. These contain many a long and ranty diary entry, that have a tendency to sound super melodramatic when I look back on them :')


The one downside about regular journaling is that these diaries contain all the turmoil of my teenage years... and most of the time it's not stuff I want to think about ever again. So what do I do? Do I throw (read: burn) the documentation of these life altering years away? Or do I keep them on my shelf for as long as I live, hoping that no one dares to read them, and never reading them myself either? Tbh, every diary/journal before 2014 seems to be filled with utterly dramatic, and at times incredibly sad entries. I'm tempted to throw the lot of them away sometimes. 


Take this diary pictured above as an example. It's my diary for 2013, which also happened to be the worst year of my life so far. Without a doubt every entry, every day was shadowed with darkness. Do I throw it away, or keep it as a reminder of what I went through, and how far I've come? Conundrum.


Anyways. In order to give myself a little more room to write about what goes on in my mind, as well as what I get up to (you won't believe how many entries are nothing but a list of all the shows I watched that day) I bought myself a day to page diary this year. Unfortunately, I was super busy during December, and was annoyingly last minute with my diary picking process, and had settle with this one from WHSmith. It's not bad! But the lines are a little too narrow, and it doesn't have the cloth bookmark thingy, which can be a little inconvenient. I was actually tempted to buy a diary from Paperchase a week into 2016 (because apparently the best annual diaries all appear in January?!) but decided to stick with this one, and hope that I fall in love with it as the year goes on :) 


So! Do any of you guys journal super regularly? What sort of journal/diary do you use? And would you want to keep a diary for the rest of your life? (The fear of people reading my diaries once I'm dead is real tbh... might have to burn them all beforehand)
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6 comments

  1. Gorgeous diaries! And I love your handwriting. I like the idea of keeping things from the past, even if it's a bit cringe-worthy. But I guess it's just because I'm crazy about mementos :)

    Dixie

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    1. Thank you! And yes if you love mementos then keeping a diary is the perfect thing for you :')

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  2. firstly, how is your handwriting so gorgeous? O.O
    and secondly, yesss, i LOVE journaling, i've been keeping diaries since i was about seven, and i've never stopped, it's such a therapeutic way to record my day and reflect on the good things that have happened. i also love paper blanks too, although for this year I've opted for something completely basic so i don't get too scared too fill it up quickly (because i'm weird like that and pretty journals are sacred in my mind)

    lovely post!

    safah | oh, how i wander

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    1. hahaha thank you! I used to have terrible handwriting as a kid so the plot twist is so real. I totally agree, jotting down your thoughts is strangely soothing, and makes you feel a little more collected you know? Ugh the pressure of filling up a diary is crazy real! Why do we put this pressure on ourselves?! I've been trying really hard to train my mind to just go with the flow :)

      Thanks for stopping by!

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  3. I seriously love journaling and diaries! Have you ever tried bullet journaling? I'm thinking of starting but have no idea where to start!

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    1. I've looked into bullet journaling and read a couple of blog posts on it too but it still confuses me! For now I like my way of journaling, and sticking post it notes on my mirror whenever i need to remember stuff for the day :')

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