Dear Diary

When I was at secondary school my best friend kept a diary. There were times she shared parts of it with me. I felt honoured but I was also a little envious. Envious that she had the self-discipline to write everyday and that she felt free enough to share her thoughts on the pages. I have tried to keep a diary a number of times but I never found it easy to write something everyday and somehow it was disappointing not to be consistent.

There are famous diaries, ones to be read and that it is another thing I find daunting about it – either it is honest and an outpouring (my favoured approach) or it has to be written in a way that it can be read and is therefore censored. These were the only two approaches in my young mind.

As I embarked upon my year of writing, I read a lot of advice about writing everyday and I guess the obvious way of doing this, if you don’t have a writing project on the go, is to write a diary.

My diary writing has not taken the form of recording the events of the day but instead has become a record of books and articles I have read and my response to these. I’ve also made notes of observations, ideas and some reflections. Occasionally there is a more emotional outpouring which has proven to be rather cathartic but there is no sense that I have a record of my days for the last year.

Holidays have become times for keeping a diary. We’ve found it a fun way to remember activities we have enjoyed and the people we have met. Sometimes it has been a shared activity. This then is a diary for jogging the memory not for recording emotions and feelings. The entries have been read again, causing laughter and memories of things unwritten.

I used to think that a diary needed to be a prose account of the day. I would be nervous about starting new writing book, scared that I would mess it up. This year I forced myself to choose from beautiful notebooks I had been given and just begin.

It is a recommended practice in helping achieve wellbeing. It gives the opportunity to vent and address problems. It provides a record, allowing you to win arguments concerning forgetfulness! Life is so often busy and frantic that having a time and a place to stop and reflect is precious.

I have found it helpful to ignore what I perceive to be the rules of writing a diary and have enjoyed the freedom this has given me. I have discovered the freedom to doodle, add quotations, write thoughts that are not complete sentences and pour out occasional streams of emotion.

I would thoroughly recommend keeping a diary and doing it your way. You don’t have to wait for the New Year, just find yourself a book and a pen and begin!

 

I started keeping a diary in third grade and, in solidarity with Anne Frank, gave it a name and made it my confidante. To this day, I feel comforted and relieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad and a pen with which to record my experiences. Ariel Levy

Be More Teen

‘Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.’ Aristotle

Teenagers get a bad press: selfish, loud, moody, aggressive, messy, irresponsible - the list could go on. The reality is more complex than this. Teenagers often express total contradictions: intense and playful, sensitive and thoughtless, dreamers and doers. Interestingly, many of these attributes are essential for creativity.

Over the last few weeks, for various reasons, I have been thinking back to my school days and teenage years. This has not always been a pleasant exercise – school was not my favourite place to be. I can remember making myself sick in order to stay at home. I experienced bullying at both primary and secondary school. The walk down memory lane was not a journey for re-living these experiences. I was looking for my best moments, the times when I felt truly alive.

‘Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.’ 

G. Stanley Hall.

 As adults, if we think about reliving our teenager years it is associated with bad taste. Whether it’s clothes or hairstyles, buying the fast car we dreamed of owning or attending an event where some tribute band are playing the tunes you rocked out to, there is the memory of freedom perhaps even rebellion.

I’ve been searching for the lost and forgotten dreams. The activities that made me feel free. These teenager years are often referred to as our formative ones because they are so crucial to creating the person we are today. When I look back there are definitely passions or capabilities that I have forgotten. These have been overlooked or discarded because the responsibilities of adulthood have taken over.

A simple example that I rediscovered recently was the joy of being on a swing. I was in someone else’s garden and there at the bottom was a huge tree, from it dangled a swing. The sun was out and the garden was bathed in spring-time glory but more than the comfy looking bench, the walk through a woodland area or the beauty of the flowers themselves, it was the swing that called out to me. Tentatively, I asked permission to sit and swing. (I had thought perhaps it was just for children). I was greeted with surprise and then a smile ‘Of course you can use the swing!’ So I indulged, gently at first and then with greater abandon. My eyes took in the garden from an entirely new view-point and then I closed them, enjoying the tingle of not knowing exactly where I was going.

I have taken some time to think back, to make a list and consider what was and what has been lost. Some of what I have rediscovered has affirmed my current choices. Others have been surprises and encouragements to try forgotten activities and reclaim passions that have been dormant.

As I look back, time and friendships appear to be different. Now, I make appointments to meet up with friends and usually they involve some kind of plan; dinner, drinks, cinema etc. Then, everything seemed more fluid (this may be poor remembering on my part) but there were definitely times of just ‘hanging out’ no plans, no agenda except to spend time with my friend. Sometimes the best times were those unplanned ones.

Time is a gift. It is up to us to decide what we will do with it. This is easier said than done and even with all my ‘flexible’ time, I am still learning about time management. Prioritising the important is my new habit. I now block out periods of time in advance so that they can be devoted to something I do not feel I have enough time for. I physically do it in my diary and I am finding it works. My husband and I have done the same for time together too. Nothing is to infringe on that time without permission from the other. There is no agenda for these times together and I think that is part of what makes them really special.

‘It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.’ E. E. Cummings

What passion or skill has been dormant since your teenage years?

How could ‘hanging out’ with no agenda benefit your relationships?

What activity would you like to try to recapture that feeling of youthful freedom?

P.S. The novel is progressing (slowly) and I will shortly be introducing you to my new blog project, so watch this space.....