Dear Diary I💜U: Reflections on a life of diary-writing and journaling

I started writing diaries in April 1985, a few months before my 13th birthday. My father – who over the course of his life had kept various diaries, three of which are in my possession – had suggested it and I agreed. He gave me my first diary, and continued to supply me with new diaries every year, until he died, in 1988. My mother wasn't much of a diary-writer, although she did keep a journal of the overland trip from UK to India that my parents made in 1973, in an Austin 1100cc and with a 7-month old @barge on board :).

I went to a boarding-school in India, and was utterly terrified of having my diary discovered, read and ridiculed. It would certainly have happened had it been found by a 'senior', or a class-mate with a grudge. Although nothing like that took place, the fear of it happening stopped me from expressing myself more fully than I did, and what I wrote in the early years is rather mundane and of no particular interest to anyone else, except maybe my class-mates :).

After school in India, I came to Scotland in early 1990, not quite 18 years old. I spent a year in Edinburgh and then went off travelling – working various jobs for short periods in Germany and France (restaurants, factories, supermarkets, whatever...), saving some money and then going off with my rucksack to hitch-hike / bus / train my way around Europe, the Middle-East and India. This was in the early-mid 90s. It is this period of diary-writing that I'd quite like to share on this blog. I would enjoy going through my diaries, especially those of 1992 and 1994/5/6, as they not only cover the periods of what I consider my most interesting travels, but they are diaries that I have never again read. I recall that this period of travelling and diary-writing carries the energy of freshness, novelty and discovery – I remember spending long periods writing in different locations and settings, something I used to really enjoy.

By the mid-late 90s, I was getting into the swing of becoming a completely alienated and confused 20-something-year-old with increasingly pessimistic views on life. The monochrome perception of adolescence, which believed that sense could be made of 'stuff', now became - with the help of travel and the exposure to some of the vast multiplicity of life – a swimming ocean of multi-dimensional colour that I could not make sense of under the old way of thinking. Nor was I ready to give up that old way of thinking! I plunged downwards towards my 30s, into a period of my life where I lived like a zombie – emotionally numb, auto-triggered by conditioning and interested mainly in keeping my mind away from the void through busy-ness, entertainment and sedation.

The effect of all this on my diary writing was that towards my late 20s, I became completely disillusioned with noting down the external – and now, to my current state of mind – meaningless everyday events. I wasn't enthusiastic and I didn't feel involved. I started to write more and more of what was in my head – but all I achieved were (as I see it now) massive loops of description and labelling which did nothing much for clarity of perception. This phase of diary-writing – in which I seemed to be going round and round and round in repetitive and downward thought spirals - ultimately got so maddening, that by the turn of the century I had stopped writing diaries altogether .

It wasn't until I entered my 40s (blessed decade :), that life opened up for me in a massive way and I was able to gradually find my way out of the locked and limited cage of dominant, analytical and circular THOUGHT. Since then, I have kept only note-books. I no longer record what I do on a daily basis – externally or internally. Sure, I have kept a brief travel journal on a couple of occasions in the past 15 years – Tahiti and NZ; as well as some scraps of disjointed diary writing when I lived for a few months in Cuba, and later, in Dubai, but they are exceptions.

Nowadays, the entries into my note-books are relatively few. I note down dreams; synchronicities that may strike me; self-readings I may do on some aspect of being; insights gained when awake, meditating or in either of those states + substance :) – that kind of thing.

I've always felt – and many people have told me – that I would really appreciate my diaries when I am older. Certainly, reading through some of the earlier ones (I got to the start of 1992 around a year ago and then stopped) brought some nice memories to the fore, but it was also rather painful, and I found myself cringing - until I'd notice the inner drama and give my confused younger self a bit of love-across-the-years :). I am grateful to my dad for having got me started on the habit of diary-writing, it was one of his many hidden gifts to me. I now look forward to opening this particular one; revisiting my past experiences and presenting some of the material here. This post btw, is my hundreth on Steemit... it's all kinda exciting!

Thanks for reading

Namaste!