I was a little older than Izzy is now when I first began keeping a diary. My parents had recently separated and I was meeting regularly with the deputy head of my school so she could keep a close eye on how I was coping with the emotional upheaval. One day she suggested I might find it helpful to write down my feelings in a notebook or journal. I was soon filling the pages of a small cloth bound book with carefully written prose, scribed in dark blue ink with my beloved fountain pen.
Years of committed diarizing followed. Each new journal was adorned with stickers, photographs and pictures cut from the pages of Mizz magazine and Sugar. Sprawling letters written in tipex warned would-be snoops to ‘keep out’. I quickly became adept at guarding my private thoughts and observations, concealing each book beneath my pillow at night as I slept.
More than simply a window to my soul, the diaries became a written document of my teenage years, charting every friendship and every school girl crush. I recorded my reaction to Take That’s break-up and divulged the details of heated arguments with my parents. I wrote about ambition, wistfully described the changing of the seasons and lamented my lack of boobs. Then, around the age of 17, I stopped. At first my entries became more sporadic, then later they ceased completely.
Almost ten years after suddenly losing the urge to religiously keep a diary, I hit publish on my first blog post. Inspired by beauty blogs like the now defunct Magpie Sparkles, I positioned myself within the same niche and quickly began publishing my thoughts on lipstick and the like. As the days wore on, snippets of my everyday life slowly crept into my content. The term ‘lifestyle blogging’ didn’t exist back then, at least not within my lexicon, and there were no experts telling me my readers would engage with more personal posts. It happened naturally because, after all those years, I still had an overwhelming desire to document.
Around twelve months later I published my first Weekend Post, sparking an ongoing series that has chronicled the way we’ve chosen to spend Saturday and Sunday almost every week for the last four years. The ritual of writing those bullet points has become second nature to me and I know I would continue to record our life in this way even if you all stopped reading tomorrow.
Social media means it’s easier than ever before to document the minutia of day-to-day life, both visually and through the written word. Blogs quickly spawned vlogs and twitter encouraged us to shout about our lives in 140 characters or less. I’m a fairly recent convert to Instagram, but it immediately appealed to my need to immortalise moments and create digital keepsakes. I regularly upload photos to Facebook and turn my children’s witty one liners into status updates, committing them to computer code lest my own memory should fail me. Then, in the wake of the inevitable backlash and concerns about the transience of it all, we revert to more traditional methods, printing and displaying the version of our lives we have carefully curated for ourselves.
There are those that don’t understand. They call it ‘oversharing’ or ‘TMI’. Perhaps they think bloggers are narcissistic show offs and fakes. They don’t want to know what we had for breakfast. They wonder what happened to the concept of privacy.
The desire to document is part of who I am and I think it always has been. The only difference is there is now apparently an audience for what might have once been private diary entries. There may be dissenters, but on some level we have all come to expect insight into one another’s lives. Those of us that want to share will continue to do so. Personally, I look forward to looking back on the record I’m creating.
Did you, or do you, keep a diary? What do you think of the desire to document?
You and I have very similar views on this. I also kept diaries as a child and teenager although mostly deciding which boys at school we best looking.
I love the sharing aspect, and the record that it creates. What those people don’t understand is the community that we belong to. The support and encouragement in good times and bad is enormous. When my ex finished things with me, I had more messages of love and support through Twitter and my blog than I had from people I knew in real life, and it matters.
Your a weekend posts are fantastic and why I started to document our weekends similarly when I started Dream Days. An exact record of life, the mundane, the momentous and everything in between, is really precious. And also, I’m a very nosy person and I just love to see what people get up to.
Great post.
I totally agreee! The community aspect is incredible and can be an amazing source of support.
I am loving your weekend posts! It always makes me happy to hear people are enjoying mine 🙂
xxx
Mizz! Sugar! I miss that…
Hi Franky,
I don’t have a blog but your weekend posts have inspired me to start recording the things I get up to in a private journal at home. This may be daily, weekly or monthly depending on what I’ve been up to! I’ve loved reading your weekend posts over the years now and I agree that they will be lovely for you to l
– to look back on in the future. (Sorry I pressed post comment by accident there!!)
That’s made my day Nicola, I’m so glad my weekend posts have inspired you as they make me really happy 🙂
xxx
Love this post! I always used to write diaries as a kid but I was never really committed to it – I wish I had now although I’m sure it would make me cringe big time! Also I love that you have your records of your weekends for four whole years, it’s so nice to remember the mundane-but-lovely moments!
Bxx
There’s definitely some cringing looking back at old diaries! Even old blog posts have that effect.
It’s the mundane moments I love most, they’re the ones you’re most likely to forget I think, but they’re the fabric of life.
xxx
Fascinating stuff and really interesting questions. I don’t think I have this desire to document, I never kept a diary successfully and I suppose logically don’t blog – but I do love looking back on old year planners and date diaries and photos. I wonder if there are statistically more bloggers who used to keep diaries? And I also wonder if it’s something that can be learned – I would actually benefit from setting up a blog and I just keep putting it off!
I think once you start it can become quite addictive. Not in a bad way, just a sort of daily ritual or habit. I had a big chunk of time where I didn’t formally document life, but blogging reignited my passion for it. Looking back over old photos and blog posts encourages me to continue too. xxx
I feel exactly the same way. I kept a diary from when I was very little, although it was mostly just “I LOVE (insert boy’s name) SO MUCH BUT HE LOVES (insert girl’s name”… sometimes I try and keep a “real life” diary, and I have been writing on actual paper a lot more recently, but online seems so much easier – you can add photos and tap it all down in a few seconds and it’ll be there forever. But, like you, I’ve always felt the need to document every little thing that is significant to me.
I document even more now I have an iPhone and Instagram! It’s definitely a hard habit to break, not that I really want to. xxx