Do\Did you keep a Diary

little lady

Just wondering if people still keep diaries??? With all the social networking and blogging sites around does anyone actually keep their thoughts written down anymore?

I use to keep them when I was younger, maybe 16/17 but I got rid of them all once I went to college.I'm sorry now that I burnt them, would love to read back over them now and see what a younger mee was thinking about, or more to the point who. :-)

I have been contemplating starting one again as I am having a really difficult time since I split with my ex, over a year at this stage, and I think writing my thoughts down might help rather than going around talking to myself !!!!

Bar the fact that I need to cope on and get over him what do you think of diaries??

Getting there

I was always too afraid to keep diaries incase someone found them. I dont know why, not like I was particularly bold or anything. And the torment from my brother when he found one where I said I fancied his friend was woeful and put me off for life, I was about7.

I prefer keeping photos now. I remember memories and times/feelings from them. In saying that Iv never been tempted to take pics of me with a sad face on so they would be more like a happy journal and Im ok with that. Out of sight out of mind etc.

I do keep a food diary now and have been know to document what I wear to work so I dont repeat outfits too much. (so sad I know, but Iv stopped now:o.)

Been keeping them on and off since I was about 13. Diaries, musings, creative writings, sketches
Social networking sites and blogs are all very well, but nothing beats pen and paper.

I have been contemplating starting one again as I am having a really difficult time since I split with my ex, over a year at this stage, and I think writing my thoughts down might help rather than going around talking to myself !!!!

You absolutely should; it's very theraputic and cathartic. Helps a lot.

fiona-f

I used to in the pre-teen and early teen years but haven't even thought about it in years. Your post got me to thinking though how much I enjoyed it so I might just get back into it.

And in answer to your specific question, I think it could be particularly good for helping you get through a big event like a painful breakup. I suppose the modern day equivalent of the diary is the blog but that would be way too public for something so emotional.

Scarinae

I keep a diary - not one of those ones where you write in it everyday though, because any time I've tried that I've only stuck to it for a few weeks in January and then tailed off into occasional entries. It works much better for me to keep a notebook that I write in whenever I feel like it, as much or as little as I want to.

I only got back into it after I discovered all my old diaries when I was home for Christmas, ones that I wrote between the ages of eight and fourteen. Reading them was absolutely hysterical - I think my favourite parts were my first impressions of people that I later became really good friends with, so the entries for my first few months of secondary school are hilarious! Other gems include my first kiss ("it was much wetter than I expected"), my first boyfriend ("he was really horrified when I told him I didn't know what a Borg was. I'm still not sure actually"), an exchange with a weird French girl ("she mixes Cola Cao with butter"), my brother getting a mobile phone ("you need to buy a card with credit on it, I don't know where you stick it in the phone though"), and installing a "trial version of the internet" ()

Unfortunately, my writing tailed off not long after I turned fourteen, I really wish I'd kept it up because there is a ten-year gap which is probably a much more interesting section of my life. Hopefully in ten years I will find my current diary as entertaining as I am finding the other ones now!

candy-gal1

Kept a diary properly since i was 15, short break for about 2years then as I just kinda got out of it, back keeping one now since Mid- Jan and I forgot how good it was to get your feelings down from right that minute/hour/day esp when there feelings

Novella

I had the most cringe-worthy dairy imaginable when I was about 16. I signed off every single thing I wrote with "Novella loves X", X being my boyfriend at the time who I thought was the bees knees.

I don't write at all anymore though. I think some of the things I think are better just left in my head!

Asphyxia

Yes I had a few written diaries. I've kept a few and when I look back through them it brings lots of feelings back :rolleyes:

I do a lot of blogging so I now keep an anonymous diary online mainly just a few lines about each day and poems and stuff. I like getting my feelings out whether typing or written it makes me feel so good.

CnaG

I've kept them on and off (mostly on) for about 10 years now. Every now and then (probably once a year or so) I read back over them. I've noticed patterns in them.

1. I was/am much more likely to write in them when feeling blue or angry, so they tend to be quite depressing reads.
2. If I wasn't depressed or angry, I was deeply enamoured of someone who probably had no idea (ages 12-19 mainly)
3. If I haven't updated it in a while, I tend to write "I'll write about (that) when I have time"... and never do :cool:

I like keeping a diary, because it helps me to work through my thoughts, and also to remember stuff that happened which I would otherwise have forgotten. How did I feel about my German mock oral exam in 6th year? No idea because I forgot to write that day :P. I know how pleased I felt about the real one though, thanks to having recorded it soon after

As to the question of whether social networking has impacted on my diary keeping - yes, I suspect it has. The spare time at home I would have been using to keep my diary in the past is now subsumed by things like Facebook. And boards... But I still write in it occasionally

CnaG

I would, by the way, be extremely pissed off if I found out someone had been snooping in my diaries.

Having said that I gave a blank one to one of my younger cousins who was having a hard time only to discover that her mother had read it subsequently, which I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I consider it a horrible invasion of privacy. On the other, her mother got her help after reading it...

If you live with nosey parkers I probably wouldn't recommend keeping a physical diary. Though you could try out a few of these tips:
http://www.wikihow.com/Hide-Your-Diary

Wolfe Tone

I dare say there are some programs you could get for the computer which would be like a diary and you could have a password an stuff? That would be cool.

I used to have a diary(not really a man thing is it?) but I found I had nothing to write! Maybe now that I'm older I may give it another bash, would be nice to read over when I am old.

Fluorescence

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

I dare say there are some programs you could get for the computer which would be like a diary and you could have a password an stuff? That would be cool.

I used to have a diary(not really a man thing is it?) but I found I had nothing to write! Maybe now that I'm older I may give it another bash, would be nice to read over when I am old.

You can get password protected and encrypted USB sticks, which I guess you could put a Word document onto that contains your diary. Not the same as the feel of writing with a pen on paper though. One of the things that interests me most is the change in handwriting between entries. How light/heavy I leaned on the pen is as good an indicator of mood as the actual tripe I write :P

I do have a burning desire to destroy my diaries though. The only time I write in them is when stuff is bugging me, and if someone were to find them they'd think I was completely insane :pac:.

Scarinae

CnaG wrote: »

If you live with nosey parkers I probably wouldn't recommend keeping a physical diary. Though you could try out a few of these tips:
http://www.wikihow.com/Hide-Your-Diary

I had a hollowed out telephone book that used to keep my diaries in! Although in retrospect it probably looked a bit strange that I had an old telephone book in my bedroom.

Chuchoter

I used to, but nosey people in my house meant I stopped. I found about 8 of them recently and threw them all away.

I still do a lot of writing but its more creative **** than anything else.

Catari Jaguar

I've got a huge box of my old year books, school journals (covered in I a million different lads) letters, literally hundreds, of the notes that were passed between me & my friends during school, you know when you had a free class or were bored in a lesson (before texting/ FB). They go from 2nd year to end of 6th year. Sometimes I read them and realise just how mad as a brush we all were as teens and how much drama, crushes and innane fun we had... I miss those days of gossip where everything was so exciting and new and confusing. Days where a guy you just met could break your heart, your parents could literally ruin your life and a best friend was a BEST friend.

I would give anything to have some of the notes I wrote given back to me. My friends box of secondary school memories got water damaged a couple of years back and she was devastated.

Eve_Dublin

This is something I'm absolutely mortified about. I used to write a diary sporadically back in my teens. I'd copies and copies of very private musings about stuff I was going through at the time (a crappy time for me), stuff about family members, being bullied, drama going on in my home, about my step-mother, relationships, feelings, boys, sexual experiences and I stupidly left them in my parents house in my old wardrobe when I moved out 10 years ago. I went to look for them a few years ago and noticed they'd all vanished!! I never asked my step-mother (who I know would've been the one who cleaned them out) if she found them as I'm so sooooo embarrassed about what they contain, even now at 31. I didn't hold back at all when I wrote them. I've no idea if she read them or not but I cringe to think she did. I'm Scarlet O' Hara!

LadyMayBelle

I was an avid diary keeper form about 8 years on, and my Dad used to get those faux leather ones from companies he used to work with..thought I was great.. went through them when I was moving out of home and was SO embarrassed I ripped them up (into teeney tiny pieces!), but now regret that.

Personal cringey gems were a recollection of how me and my friend used to get the 'cool' spot on the bus in first year, presumably so we could look 'cool' just by standing there. Then a horrible one of how I lost my footing and swung around the bus pole mortified and crashed into A**n, (yes, I couldn't even bear to write his name back then!!) who was in third year and I nearly died.

Lots of writing about the 'love hour' on our crappy local radio station; we used to ring in requests for a joke and send in soppy letters and the dj would read them out...all funny until it was YOUR name and XX in the boys school..morto!!!

My lil sis keeps one now, and I try to encourage her.

Still remember the paranoia that my mum was reading it, and I know she did because I used to leave things in a certain way, and then I would leave notes to the 'nosey person who won't let me have my life!!'

Mc Kenzie

Iv stopped and started keeping diaries since 12/13....

im 23 now. i like to express my thaoughts privately and freely and it is nice to look back on how you were feeling atcertain points of your life.

Its very creative and i see as a sort of art. i like to write poems and songs when im inspired or keep quotes that i like.

it is very theraputic also to relax. and also orders your thaughts.

I keep it along with photos and pics of things iv collected.

Altho my spellings gone to pot since phones, computers and facebook.:P

G86

I keep a journal, it's like a diary and I write in it most days - poems, thoughts, feelings..

I've found that writing has helped me through a lot in my life.

SarahBeep!

When I ws in secondary school. Then one day during a free class a friend asked if I had a spare page so I tore out the back page of my diary and put it back in my bag, gave my friend the page. The teacher supevising was an evil cow and asked why I gave my friend a page and was I passing notes. I said no, it's a blank page. She replied 'I want the page, give it to me. And I want the book you took it out of too.' WTF!! She took it, read it, gave it to my principal who read it, who gave it to my paents who read it.
Thinking about it still upsets me!!

ElleEm

I kept a diary from the age of about eight til my early twenties. I still have them all now. I'm glad I resisted the urge to burn them- they are hysterical.
When I was 15 and 16 I thought I was too cool for school!!! I was a big eegit!
I consistently wrote "Dear Diary" at the start of my entries, and signed off with my name. In the earlier diaries, I would use the first page to describe myself (in every one from the age of eight!!!) and I even cut off bits of my hair and glued it in! I also used a "complicated" secret language for the dirty things I got up to with boys where I omitted the vowels from words- I SERIOUSLY thought that noone would be able to understand it.
I sporadically write now and find it really cathartic.

little lady

SarahBeep! wrote: »

She replied 'I want the page, give it to me. And I want the book you took it out of too.' WTF!! She took it, read it, gave it to my principal who read it, who gave it to my paents who read it.
Thinking about it still upsets me!!

What a cow, I would have gone nuts at her and at my parents for reading it.

My diaries were full of crushes, being the youngest and having 3 older brothers meant there were always older guys I liked who would never have any interest in me, was quite upsetting at the time :-)

I think people are rigth that it is therapeutic, hopefully it will work, everything else seems to have failed.

SarahBeep!

There was stuff in it that were just for me and other people reading it really bothered me, I still have privacy issues over it!

starlit

Yes I did when I was a teenager but not anymore. It was just to write my thoughts but worried people find it and read it cause it was a bit too personal. Now Just have a diary to keep track of events and important dates like birthdays etc.

Nightwish

I kept a diary most of the way through my teenage years but my mother read them and I got into a LOT of trouble for what I had written, so I didnt feel I could commit my most inner thoughts to paper anymore. I started again in college when things were bad personally, and continued ad hoc over the past 10 years. I have started avidly keeping one in the past 6 months however. I feel it helps to purge whatever stress I have been carrying.

squeakyduck

I used to keep a diary but I don't anymore. Sometimes I look back on it and cringe at how stupid I was back 4 years ago.......!

dammitjanet

I've an old chest in my room that I have packed with old notebooks which I've been keeping since I was 7. They're filled with drawings, diary accounts, pictures, stories and anything else I wanted to keep safe.
I love looking back on them. Anytime there was a major event in my life I'd write about it- my first ever dance with a boy, being bullied in school, starting secondary school, first night I went out drinking, right up to seeing my OH for the first time and when he said I love you.
I hope that one day my kids will find the books and read though them to get to know what I was like when I was young and stupid

carolinespring

I first started keeping a diary when Iwas about 6years old, all the silly stuff of school, homework and friends. I have kept a diary on and off since, mainly when I am havng a really ****e time in life. I find writing really helps. I also notice I write a lot when I am really happy so not so much when life is just coating along. I burned most of them about 2 or 3 years ago and am not sorry I did. The ones from when my Dad was dying I reread and my heart broke agian. I also read over the ones from when I broke up with a long term boyfriend in 1999 and could not help wondering who the hell was I? How did I let someone run my life for 3 years and why did it take me 3 years to get rid of the waste of same. The ones form when I met my husband are like a bloody Mills and boon book. I am so sorry ididnt keep them.

I still write but manly when when I am having it tough.

ztoical

I kept a written diary on and off for a couple of years in my teens but I was pretty rubbish for doing it regularly. It became more of a once a week summary of films I'd seen which isn't a bad thing I guess as I've ended up working in the film/television industry.

I've never been as confident with my writing as I have with my drawing so for the last number of years I've done dairy comics and daily sketches rather then a written diary. I find them a very good tool for me as an artist to see some development, experiment with ideas and as a source for illustrations or comics.

g'em

I kept a diary sporadically when I was younger and still read through them from time to time - it's neverending entertainment to read back over the things that you used to agonise over when you were 12/13. Oh if only life were that simple now

I still a journal of sorts now - not something that's written in every day, but ever few weeks or months when needs be. The one thing I am dedicated to writing in though is my travel journals. I religious keep one whenever I go away and they're some of my most treasured posessions. The last big one I wrote was a couple of years ago when I went to Africa and when I came home I typed it all up and put the photos I took into it - my Mum has asked that for her 60th birthday this year I get it printed and bound, and I'll probably make one for myself too.

I think it's a lovely record to have of your thoughts and feelings at any given pivotal moment in your life and it's something you can share in the future (levels of mortification to be advised )

imbroglio

Some of the memories here are great!

I kept a diary from the ages of 14 to 18, they're still at home in my room. I keep meaning to throw them away, but there is something stopping me. Not sure what it is, because if i'm honest, I don't think i'm 'ready' (at 23) to read them yet! I had a pretty hard time back then and i was really opinionated, so it'd just be so so cringeworthy reading over them! I tried to read them once and god, i was so dramatic! You'd swear i was the first teenager ever to live. I thought I was sooo misunderstood!:rolleyes:

I do wish i still had the confidence to write as honestly as I did back then. I find it so hard now, I really think that social networking has made me second-guess myself a lot. I'm very paranoid about my privacy on facebook etc, so I reckon it has spilt over into any other writing I try and do, even private stuff!

imbroglio

imbroglio wrote: »

I do wish i still had the confidence to write as honestly as I did back then. I find it so hard now, I really think that social networking has made me second-guess myself a lot. I'm very paranoid about my privacy on facebook etc, so I reckon it has spilt over into any other writing I try and do, even private stuff!

My handwriting in my journals is surprisingly bad :pac:

Azureus

I used to keep a diary from about 13-15 but tore it up when I left home because I was mortified of anybody ever seeing it! Very cringeworthy...although had a re-read of it before I got rid and couldnt even remember liking some of the boys I had 'oh my gooood they are amaaaaaaazing' crushes on If only I could tell my 14 year old self that I wasnt *actually* madly in love

Used to write an awful lot...mostly pretencious crap to be honest...although I did have a habit of just switching off and letting the pen ramble the page and its amazing the stuff you come out with. Stuff you dont even realise you were thinking. Self indulgent writings like those can be fun, I just like my private thoughts to stay private now...be too worried of anybody getting inside my head after reading em. (not in a sci-fi kinda way..just..ykno!)

LovexxLife

I always wanted to keep a diary, but I never actually did but Hoping to get a nice wee notebook in da next few days to start. I have written like random pages on pieces of paper and kept them hidden on under the bed away from the folks. But I hope to start keeping one soon but dont paln to write in it everyday, just when something interesting happens really.

Logical Fallacy

I've got books of ****, drawings, sketches, ramblings, bull**** like that.

The best stuff i ever did was a load of impossible shapes....Escher like stuff. I spent about 4 hours working on an impossible star once but i lost that damn book.

But yeah, they are handy for rambling stuff, can be awful tempting to chuck out the old ones but i never do.

The funniest pages in my recent ones are where i am away from computer and have come up with a class beat or melody in my head, writing the music itself is fine but i have loads of coded grids to signify beats, effects chains and velocities that never make any sense to me when i am back at my computer.:o

Elevelyn

I used to love writing in my diary when I was about 15. Every night before bed I usually wrote a full A4 page, all about family stuff going on and about the boy I loved :rolleyes: at the time.

Until it was stolen by my brothers friend, brought to the school of said boy, photocopied and handed out EVERYWHERE :eek::eek::eek: Years later I was talking to some people about it, turned out that one of them had read it and wasn't even from the town I lived in!!

Could never bring myself to write personal stuff down again, used to love it so much though.

Pretty Polly

I kept a diary for a while when i was 12 but my brother broke the lock with a knife one day and read it. That kind of ruined it for me!
Since then i never bothered keeping one even though i would have liked to.

mollybird

ya i had kept a few diaries when i was in my teens. would have kept about 4/5 of them but like most people stopped once i turned 18 or 19. still have them and love looking back on them.

don't think id keep one now but will always something i keep. i kept all kinds of stuff in them. flowers i got from boyfriends, photo's and some letters.

Scarinae

Elevelyn wrote: »

I used to love writing in my diary when I was about 15. Every night before bed I usually wrote a full A4 page, all about family stuff going on and about the boy I loved :rolleyes: at the time.

Until it was stolen by my brothers friend, brought to the school of said boy, photocopied and handed out EVERYWHERE :eek::eek::eek: Years later I was talking to some people about it, turned out that one of them had read it and wasn't even from the town I lived in!!

Could never bring myself to write personal stuff down again, used to love it so much though.

:eek: That's so horrible! What a d1ckhead :mad:

miec

Hi Op

I don,t so much as have a diary as I write in a journal, some days I write loads, others nothing and when the notepad is full I burn it, I find it incredibly helpful to just off load emotional stuff, be open because I know 1) no one will read my terrible writing and 2) it gets burnt/ destroyed.

Skintwin

I don't have a diary, but I do have a little notebook where I write down stuff that I don't particluarly want to talk about, or stuff that I want to remember perfectly. Some days I write pages and oages, but other days I wrote absolutely nothing. For me, it's like a person that I can tell anything to, without being judged.

Asphyxia

Looked back through lots of stuff today! I've got a massive box filled with notepads, sketchbooks and folders full of drawings, painting, songs and poems. I might make an account on something and post them up and see what people make of them! Anyone have any sites for those kind of stuff?

--LOS--

I kept one on/off through some of my teen years but then I destroyed it as the worry of someone reading it was too great, I would be interested to read back on it now but it would probably just hurt me.

Wolfe Tone wrote: »

I dare say there are some programs you could get for the computer which would be like a diary and you could have a password an stuff? That would be cool.

ye ofc there is Almanah diary etc for linux so I'm sure there's plenty more out there.

doctor evil

Tried once or twice but I could never keep to it.

vicecreamsundae

I've always kept diaries, since I was about seven, and have them all in the attic. the ones from 14-16 are the best, I'm in tears reading over them! I never fail to read something i completely forgot happened. Around 17/18 I started a blog which basically took the place of a diary. It would be (boring) detailed accounts of my day to day, but of course there were some things I wouldnt put in it. I kept it until about last year when i lost the password (just got access to it again this week funnily enough). I do love that i have eight years of a record, that i can just type in a date and see what i was up to years ago! and because i wrote them myself i can read between the lines and so the things i didnt explicitly mention are still obvious to me. but like i said, havent written in a year, and don't know if i will bother now.

i also keep a , ahem, kind of sex/dating diary. want to look back on these things when i'm an old lady hahaha! i do like reading over it and going "oh yeah, THAT time!"

jimbobaloobob

that diary will be the work of movies 50 years from now vicecream:D

mollybird

vicecreamsundae wrote: »

I've always kept diaries, since I was about seven, and have them all in the attic. the ones from 14-16 are the best, I'm in tears reading over them! I never fail to read something i completely forgot happened. Around 17/18 I started a blog which basically took the place of a diary. It would be (boring) detailed accounts of my day to day, but of course there were some things I wouldnt put in it. I kept it until about last year when i lost the password (just got access to it again this week funnily enough). I do love that i have eight years of a record, that i can just type in a date and see what i was up to years ago! and because i wrote them myself i can read between the lines and so the things i didnt explicitly mention are still obvious to me. but like i said, havent written in a year, and don't know if i will bother now.

i also keep a , ahem, kind of sex/dating diary. want to look back on these things when i'm an old lady hahaha! i do like reading over it and going "oh yeah, THAT time!"

heh vicecreamsunday,
how do i get to write a blog, sorry where do i go to start one. the way things are going in my life again would like to start writing my thoughts down again but just not on pen and paper. thanks

Fluorescence

You can make one for free at any blogging website. Some examples are:

www.wordpress.com

www.tumblr.com

www.blogspot.com


Hope this helps

Snoopy1

I kept one when i was 15, then stopped when my mum read them, and started reading that id had sex :mad:

ConTheCat

Always used to keep one until my sciving mother read it. Still put in an odd day here and there. Do have right giggles reading it!!
I read, my parents were getting a divorce at the time, & I wrote my parents are going to court I hope my mammy gets life sentence Also, my friend says she has a boyfriend and kisses him...gross!! All at the age of ten

Aoifey!

When I was 10/11 I had a diary that my brother stole and read, which put me off them for a while. In the last few years I have started writing again. I tent to just write on sheets, keep them for a few weeks, then throw them away.

I think writing gives more of an outlet than typing, you can write big, small, messy, neat, anything really. All that adds to it in my mind and when I read back over it it helps.