My grandfather was the type of man who would beat his son with a rake for drinking underage or would pretend he didn’t know you if you embarrassed him in public.
I bought this day timer thinking I would use it to organize my life, and instead it’s become a diary where I write one page about what I did in my day.
Without planning it, I start each entry with “Today I …”
I write very neutrally about the events of my day and only include the details and not much information about how I feel about things unless I’m having a particularly bad day.
I might write something like, “Today I saw a woman with thick black glasses standing on the sidewalk taking pictures of cherry blossoms while smoking a cigarette. Or I will repeat a headline: “A child in Gaza watched his mother burn alive. Then he died too.”
If I write a feeling, I might say, “Today I am depressed” or “Today I am scared.”
I’ve never been good at keeping a diary, but I guess this is what I’m doing.
I do it at the end of the day before bed.
My grandfather who wasn’t a particularly nice man kept a diary of the weather.
I used to think that was boring, but now I think it’s interesting, and I would like to see it, but I have no idea where his diaries ended up.
We could all write a diary of the weather, and it would sound different.
I wonder how he described each day of winter when it felt like winter would never end. I wonder how he described the rain and sunny days. Did he ever make notes about clouds or critters? Were there any mentions of trees?
My grandfather was the type of man who would beat his son with a rake for drinking underage or would pretend he didn’t know you if you embarrassed him in public.
Sometimes I skip a day writing in this diary, but I don’t let myself feel guilty about it.
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