Life Diary Project

[tuesday_morning]

 

There's a book that I ran into again at my local bookstore. It's called "When Women Were Birds" by Terry Tempest Williams. I never finished reading the book, but I seek to fix that. From what I read, though, the book begins with the passing of the author's mother. The mother leaves her diaries to her daughter to be read after she passes, and once she passes, her daughter looks at the diaries only to realize that they are all empty. It is unknown why the mother leaves her empty diaries to her daughter, but something about the experience is so moving that the daughter takes the empty diaries and begins to write in them herself.

Now, I'm someone that journals, but I don't know that I'm a person that actually keeps a diary... what is the difference between the two anyways? I'm certain that I'm not sure, but regardless, I think I would like to keep a diary of my own; a record of my deepest and innermost perceptions of the world as told by the ongoings and reflections on my everyday life, no matter how mundane the activities that take place are. How long will I keep this diary for? I'm not sure. I hope for it to be a long-term activity that I do, but you never know where my attention will take me.

I won't put too many rules on this project of mine, but I would like to challenge myself to fill the contents of a nice diary by using my mindfulness skills. By being mindful of my actions and of the world around me, I'll be able to have a better time writing down what I notice and the insights that I can come to... but, this won't come without its challenges. I'm constantly plugging my ears with music, and that's a problem if I want to be mindfully present in the moment, because I'm distracted and "doing two things at once". In my DBT class, we're being taught that doing two things at once doesn't allow us to truly be mindful, so I'll have to cut back on the music. I could replace it with audiobooks or simply silence. Either of those would be better than the music... though ideally, it would be silence.

Anyways, I hope to start my journal today or tomorrow. I hope it all goes well and that I'm able to look at the world with "new eyes" instead of just glancing over the mundane like I happen to do when I'm tuned out of the world.

Comments

[adore]

I love that you're going to reflect on your days with a life diary. One of my language-learning goals is to keep a diary in Korean.

[tuesday_morning]

That is SO cool! I wish I could write my diary in a second language. That would probably make learning another language much easier, at least as it relates to reading and writing it.

I wish you luck with keeping a diary in Korean!