👀 Dear Diary
I always wanted to be the kind of person who keeps a daily journal.
I bought notebook after notebook throughout my childhood, hoping to inspire the diarist in me with aesthetic covers and that delicious ‘new notebook’ smell.
These hopes were unceremoniously crushed every single time, but I haven’t given up even now. I still harbour the fantasy that one day I will find in myself the will to sit down at my desk each morning or at the end of each day and pour out on the page the thoughts and experiences that graced my life with their presence.
In the early days, journaling enticed me as a tool to record everything that happened to me.
But now we have social media, where we’re essentially creating detailed databases of our most private moments, public triumphs and all the random stuff that happens in between.
At the age of 26, journaling appeals to me as a way to get a grip on my incessant ruminations, to tame them by putting them on a page as words as opposed to letting them knock me down like waves in the middle of a sea storm.
I’ll keep you updated on my journey towards journaling (to give up hope is to commit a crime in my book), but meanwhile, you can check out this huge list of diaries kept by notable personalities around the globe: The Diary Junction. This is one person’s effort to “provide an internet resource for those interested in historical and literary diaries and diarists.” Neat.
It’s a plain website that does what it says. You can easily spend hours going through the diaries of people you admire, as well as unfamiliar personalities who kept fascinating diaries.
Go forth, rummage.