Six years of writing a journal/diary..

January 1 2008.

"and this is me trying to do a journal. This is the first day of the year, and I am big on the I resolve to be Happy thing. I need to remember that and keep a special section on it."

Have you ever kept a daily journal, diary? I use a computer one which allows me to easily go back and forth over the same days over the years. It has been funny, helpful, depression and rewarding .

There is an idea of living in the present , being free from the past which journals do not allow but depending on what  you want to do with your journal, things could be turned around.

Some nights I am too tired to write and there are one liners, or there is nothing for a few days. Some days have lengthy texts about how much things I will change. Except that these texts repeat themselves over the years.

The thing about secrets - it is not easy to be honest even in a journal since you wonder if somebody get access to it all yuh dutty story come out. So there are codes now when referring to love and so on.  Is funny about the love thing.. as I go back  through the entries and realise for example, that the love had moments of despair at the loss, then beautiful moments of reconciliation and then despair at loss again .

Ironically, long before actual separation was 'confirmed' ,  I had written about mourning the end of the connections.

In going back over the journals, I realised that I had been writing about my feelings that my connection  with SASOD was going haywire long before I resigned.

It was good that a few times I wrote about things which made me feel good. Like music and things I read. So on days when things aint good, I could go back and find them and laugh again.

It is funny how I wrote about some people I encountered.. first names only, and then as I read now I cannot recall who they are. So now I write full names in case I forget them in the future.

I write about food in the journal, and have nice memories about bad and good things I ate. I used to write about running on the seawall which I cannot do anymore.  Some times when I felt eloquent I wrote about feeling breeze and so on, so I could still remember and feel now how I felt then. It is all probably useless in the larger scheme of things, but.. perhaps knowing that somethings were tried is still good.

I wished I had written more about some things - like which parts of the Ramayana we sung at the full names of the places we had visited.. instead of 'Last night Ramayana was amazing'



Changing the narrative..

After a long time I decided to ensure that instead of or in addition to writing how miserable I feel or felt, that I try a thing with a template of questions. This has been powerful because in addition to writing about how screwed up I feel, the answering of the questionnaire helps a bit.

It is easy to become depressed further if there are no answers. I have found out how refreshing it is that even on the days when I did not want to get up, or just wanted to lock myself in a dark cool room, that there is a lot to write in answer to these questions.

1) What did I learn today, or do new or different;

2) How did I help/teach someone today, who did I learn from, who helped me?

3) What choice I made to day to sustain wellness? How did I rejuvenate and refresh myself?

Nuff people say that it is good to write down things daily  , especially when dealing with mental health. I believe so too.