The Adventure of the Dignified Diaries

Whilst I generally consider myself a modern millennial, in some ways I am quite old-fashioned. One such example is that I keep a long-form diary. 

I've been doing it for so long that I can't remember why I started. I know that I first experimented with a diary on a holiday to Cornwall when I was ten years old. By that point, my English skills were surprisingly advanced and the week's journey reports on a variety of trips out, all of which were hugely exciting to the ten-year-old me. 

I must have decided I liked it because the following year I began a proper, permanent diary. I wasn't particularly disciplined at writing in it for a few years but I wrote every now and then. Initially, it seemed to mostly focus on the minor dramas in my ten and eleven-year-old life, like who my best friend was. As my teenage years began and hormones kicked in it seemed to focus increasingly more on which girl I fancied at any given moment in time and my constant inner battle of whether to do anything about my feelings and inevitably doing nothing. 

As I grew the diaries grew with me, gradually becoming more sophisticated. They became a record of what I was doing as well as a record of the wider world in general. I began to discuss current affairs and my views on them. A glance through my 2009 diary demonstrates a not inconsiderable fear of swine flu, which now seems rather quaint given the current situation. 

The earlier volumes are fairly sparse, there was a period when I was at university where I didn't write for a while and there were a few months more recently where life was difficult and I didn't really fancy writing about it. It's far from a complete record but I like the fact that I have at least some writing about every year of my life between ages 10 and 28, which I imagine is quite a rare thing.

I generally consider my diary to have three purposes. The first is simply as a record of my life. There are moments when want to look up something and I can fairly quickly find the correct entry and get the information I require. Looking back over some of them recently, it's amazing how many memories get locked away. The diaries record them for prosperity and memories I didn't even know I had came flooding back to me. 

Secondly, writing a diary is great for mental health. I struggle to really talk about things with people, even those I'm close to, but I can happily write in my diary without fear of judgment or being treated differently. Putting feelings into words also means you end up making more sense to them. This can be really positive and instead of spending time deep into the night worrying or thinking about things you can do it more concisely on the page.

The third reason may sound a little grandiose but I do like to consider my diaries as a future historical document. the 1600s had Samuel Pepys, the 2000s has me. OK, I'm under no illusion that my writings will actually be a useful document for future historians, as bemusing as the idea is. But I like to think that my diaries will be a lovely thing for those I eventually leave behind to have. They may not be widely fascinating but for someone at least my personal story will be there to be read, in my own words. My diary of 2020 is a personal record of the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing lockdown, political decisions, getting a test and how schools have been affected.

For now though, they remain strictly for my eyes only.