More thoughts on diary writing

Here is my second post about diary writing. The first one can be found here and concerns the practicality of the habit -- how I do it, with what, and how often.

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I knew that this second post was going to be a bit more abstract than the first so I'm not too sure about the format. Thus, a looser structure is indicated.

Reasons why I write in a diary

I touched briefly on why I began writing, but not why I continued to write, and why I will continue to write every day, once a day, ad infinitum. To be honest, I don't have a concrete answer. It's become habit at this point where I feel discomfort in forgetting to write or not writing adequately. Writing at the end of the night unburdens me from the thoughts I've had that day. It's a conveniently private outlet for the daily stresses and emotions, which I feel could otherwise build up to unhealthy levels. At a more basic level, I write every day because memory is unreliable and writing things down helps me keep them.

I also like my penmanship, and use my diaries as a way to indulge myself there. I also recently bought a fountain pen and ink.

It's not journaling

And I get a bit defensive about that, in real life when people find out about this practice and internally when I see blog posts, YouTube videos, think-pieces, Pinterest posts, etc about journaling. It's a bit of an irrational aversion to the term, but I know that others may see these posts here and code my diary writing as journaling.

To me, journaling suggests deeper emotional content and creativity. A lot of journaling fads I've seen on the internet seem juvenile and hokey, but that's just me being judgmental about things that don't concern me.

If anything, I downplay my emotions in my diary and contrive to keep my entries restrained and cold. I can easily dissect my thoughts and emotions on paper, but seldom let emotions themselves guide my writing. Long story short, I still think I have issues expressing myself and being vulnerable in my diary, but that I really could benefit from taking the 'journaling' road of emotional catharsis. But then again, I do get some kind of catharsis after writing.

It's not meditation, either

Until I think about it.

I'm not really a follower of mindfulness or meditation or any number of techniques and products and self-help media that will help me achieve them. However, once I peel back the pretty social media influencer veneer, I see its value. I really think that setting time aside in the day to be alone with your own thoughts is important. Quiet time for reflection and self-awareness, protected time where self-centeredness and selfishness are mandatory.

For some people, meditation is the way to do this. For me, I need to write it down.

How has it helped me?

I don't know exactly. I have been writing in my diary since I was a teenager and don't know any other way of life. Writing about anger and interpersonal issues helps me prevent arguments and confrontations -- by the way, my cardinal sin of choice is, and has always been wrath. I think I'm a more even-keeled and disciplined person for it, but I have no way of telling that.

However, one thing I do know for certain is that daily diary entries help me identify my personality traits and flaws. I know myself fairly well. It's all written there.

I'm not enlightened

That goes without saying. However, I think that people may erroneously think that writing about yourself will make you a better person. I believe that I would not know myself as well or be as comfortable with self-criticism (or take self-criticism too harshly) if I didn't write in my diary, but I don't know if that has had led to distinct changes in my behavior or personality.

The Lord of Three Realms

The blog and the diary fill different niches and serve different purposes. The blog is a more longitudinal view of myself and my interests and was created explicitly to help me become a better, more advanced version of myself. The Lord of Three Realms as an imaginary entity lives at the end of the staircase of self-improvement. LL versions I through XIV may be distinct and show growth, but the daily variations in the writer are too small to appreciate or care about.

The next post

Let's talk about you instead

Assorted thoughts on diary writing

Volumes I to XIII, autumn 2007 to present

I write a daily diary. This is the first in a three-part series about diary writing.

After reading the Diary of Anne Frank at an early age, I thought it would be important to chronicle my life. In fifth grade, our teacher required each of us to keep a writer's notebook, and I distinctly remember one little proto-diary with a blue and brown cover. In it lives my larval political outrage at Bush v. Kerry 2004, a detailed account of a roadtrip to Yellowstone National Park and the wildlife I saw, and my goals for my Pokemon Sapphire progress.

Sometime around that, I received the volume with the blue cats on the cover for a birthday and abandoned my old notebook for it. I abandoned that one, too, when daily writing became a bore. I rediscovered the cat diary sometime in college, where it fell in line as Vol. VIII of my archived life. The first fifteen pages contain the imaginations and ramblings of a ten year-old who hated school, and the rest contains the long-winded agonies of a nineteen year-old studying for the MCAT. The last page contains my score.

I began writing in earnest in August 2007, and then daily in August 2008 at the start of high school. Every day has an entry, whether it was written before midnight, after midnight, the morning after, or in pieces over the subsequent week.

Materials and Methods

I am very fond of beautiful notebooks. Many of the more recent volumes have come from Paperblanks, which have beautiful covers, luxurious paper, and a shocking sticker price. However, it is important to me that these volumes last long, lay flat, and are a delight to write in. Hence, I can justify throwing money at expensive stationery, and am seriously considering buying a fountain pen for the next volume. I currently use any number of pens around my desk to write, but reserve my favorite pens for diary writing.

I write mostly about what happened to me on any given day, anything at all. I don't follow prompts and I don't describe this process as 'journalling,' which is becoming more popular nowadays. I have poured out my heart before, but have also written in exhaustive detail everything I could remember from surgeries that I have shadowed, complete with sketches. During gross anatomy, my entries read more like a dissection manual than anything else; when I was in Germany, it was an itinerary with as much sensory details I could fit in. Memorable patients, memorable places, etc. It varies. I could be more reflective, emotional, and introspective, but those entries are not common.

Rules and Rituals

Over the years, some rules and rituals have emerged. Exceptions are noted if ever applicable.

• write in pen only
• begin each entry with the date
• end each entry with a signature
• write at night immediately before going to bed, but fill in details the morning after in case I missed something (rarely) -- only under very specific circumstances will I revisit an entry after a day
• if I am currently writing Vol. n, I am not allowed to read from Vol. n - 1 until I finish Vol. n
• at the end of Vol. n, I write a postcard to myself to read when I begin writing Vol. n + 7. This began with the end of Vol. VIII
• include ephemera (ticket stubs, stickers, etc) if they are important or beautiful
• write legibly, but try not to waste space
• note the Vol. number on the front page
• copy a meaningful poem or quote on the back page
• be HIPAA compliant
• one entry each day, every day, ad infinitum

Next time: what I have learned from writing a diary, why you may want to consider it yourself, and how it has affected me

My diary and the definition of privacy

First post of 2015 and I write about the most egocentric thing possible - my diary. As a bit of background information, I have kept a daily diary since 2006, but only in 2008 did it become truly a daily diary. To get pedantic about it, the terminology of this whole business of writing thoughts down in a book to keep for all posterity does differentiate between 'diary' and 'journal,' and up until recently, I didn’t think there really was a difference.

I think that matter of wording is a discussion for another time, but essentially, what I do - and what many, many others before and after me have done/will do - is a mix of what 'diary' and 'journal' suggest. Every night, shortly before I go to sleep, I write an entry into a book. The entry accomplishes a few things:

1. It serves as a record of what I did in a given day

2. It logs my emotions regarding what I did/observed/experienced/thought about in a given day
3. It keeps track of persons of interest - more on this later

4. It is a genuine and near-perfect representation of who I am on a day-to-day basis. It is honest. It recreates the individual that I was - mental, emotional individual - with the highest fidelity. It is unrevised and uncensored

For most people who keep a diary-type thing, the concept of someone else reading these texts is pretty darn abhorrent. What more personal document can there be? - and by what sense of entitlement does someone ask to read someone else's diary?

Recently, a friend of mine named ZZ asked to read my diary. We were talking about writing and how our styles/content/relationship to our work is about as different as potted plants and bubblegum. He, like many people that know me in real life, knew that I kept a diary, and then he asked to read it.

I've been around him enough to know that there wasn't any sort of ill-intent, so I laughed at him, told him how preposterous his request was, and told him no.

"Why?"

It's personal stuff, and it's private. And still, "Why not? Can I just see today's entry?"

So I gave him a description of that day's entry, which was a laundry-list of my activities for the day. Since I was around him for most of the day, it was no news. But then, he asked, "If it's just that, then why can't I read it?"

I wasn't going to budge, and gave him what I thought was a pretty good explanation for why nobody is entitled to read another person's diary - and that seemed to satisfy him. Here is something like it, but I've added some other thoughts:

The whole point of a diary for myself and myself only. It's the only place/object thing that contains this pure, unaltered version of myself beyond the confines of my own brain. I can share my body and I can share my thoughts by talking to other people - and that's physical and emotional intimacy there - but those things are not as private as my own brain, the sum total of all the things I've experienced and observed and gave a first, second, nth thought to. All that is private, and that's simply impossible to share. When I write that down, I share these things to an inanimate object, whose only measure of life is the one that I give in that moment, and the next dose when I read it over again.

Surely all that is too cerebral - and that's my joke of the entry - but even as I told ZZ something along those lines, I got to thinking about how it is I even value privacy at the level that I do. Surely, by all the things movies and literature have told us, diaries are private. If the heroine's sister peeks at it, she'll wallow in misery and throw a fit. If the heroine's crush reads it and finds out all the soppy details of her unrequited love, then she's mortified but the plot moves along.

Fiction establishes a precedent for taboo, but privacy and violation of it serve as points of drama. It gives a template for normal folks like ourselves to relate to and react to the words we put out, personal diaries and journals or other. Privacy - define it as you like.

Nowadays, people pour their emotions and personal matters out onto the Internet. I write these little things on this blog, and my sister writes essays. She writes extensively about her thoughts/opinions/criticism/analysis of topics that may or may not have a direct influence on her life - and still, it's more personal than anything I'd like to write for the Internet. One of my friends puts his familial agonies on the same Tumblr that has his face on it. Another friend of mine shares her love poems, but without her name or her face.

All these - different definitions of privacy. At the end of it, who could possibly, speaking from a point of logistics and practicality, read my diary but someone who knows my full name, my face, and have some level of intimacy with me? That's too much for me. And, as I said to ZZ, the only person that has looked inside that sacred document, was my sister, and only then with the purpose of finding a password that I thought I lost.