Finding Beauty In A Diary

In my school days, I used to laugh at friends — mostly the girls — who kept diaries. I imagined their pages filled with stories of crushes and frenemies, nothing more than the passing dramas of adolescence. Never did I imagine that, decades later at 58, I would keep one myself — and cherish it. I still call mine a journal, though diary and journal are really one and the same.

My journaling began in 2021, during a frightening stretch of brain fog that landed me in the hospital. I found myself clinging to memory by repetition — my name, my Social Security number, my phone number, even the names and numbers of my children and ex-spouse. I kept a notebook close by and wrote down everything I could remember. That notebook became my lifeline.

Over time, that tool became a habit. I scribbled in notebooks, left notes in Google Calendar, and eventually moved to an app on my phone. Today I use Diarium, where each day I record the ordinary details of life: what I ate, what I did, where I went, whether I took my medications. At first it was only for tracking. Slowly, it became more. Thoughts, feelings, even fragments of old memories found their way in. I’ve also gone back and written down the important dates of my life. Still no entries about high school crushes — but perhaps that’s for the best.

Now, with years of daily entries behind me, I see the quiet beauty of this practice. Even the simplest notes — a meal, a walk, a reminder — become anchors to the past. Flipping through them is like stepping into a time machine, where the most ordinary days suddenly glow with vividness. What might have been forgotten is remembered, and with memory comes a smile.

And so I wonder: what will it be like, twenty-five years from now, to look back on a lifetime of these entries? I think that is when I will truly see the beauty of a diary. And perhaps I’ll finally have the courage to list down all my crushes, past and present. (Though I might need a secret code for that section.)

This very thought came to me over a quick lunch at a highway service area, as I scrolled through Diarium’s On This Day. Sometimes, meaning appears in the quietest, most ordinary moments.