Jabblog on the subject of her new diary recently said, amongst other things, "When I was a teenager, it took me ages to write a letter because I had to keep starting again after I’d made a mistake. Quite ridiculous!"
I read that at the time that I was filling in my 2024 pocket diary. Without it I am absolutely lost. Like Janice I start off trying to be very orderly and neat. It is helped in my case by the fact that I only use pencil for appointments. However birthdays and other dates are in fine red ink so as to stand out. I cannot understand how it is that half way through the year I will have a few entries that are a day out because I copy across from the old diary without concentrating. I find it irrationally annoying.
I have been using the same diary format which fits into a leather cover for many many years. I am used to it. It is a sort of comfort blanket. On the odd occasion that I have mislaid my diary over the years (I have always eventually found it) I nearly have a nervous breakdown. My diary, like my car keys, carry a reasonable reward for its return if lost.
Given that almost everything else I do I do on my iPhone and associated MacBookPro and iPad (which Apple users will understand because everything done on one is automatically available on the others and is instantly backed up in the Cloud) I cannot understand why I don't do the same for my diary.
However my diaries go back continuously to 1974 well before I had any form of electronic recording device.
Returning to Janice's original point I write a lot of letters using a fountain pen. I have been known to start again because of an error. However a few years ago I decided that this was causing me to lose spontaneity and all of a sudden the occasional crossing out almost became the norm. It certainly doesn't worry me any more.
Yet another thing we have in common Graham ... I have my diaries going back to 1987!
ReplyDeleteJill, I find it great for working out where photos might have been taken.
DeleteI use my phone for all appointments. Until I retired I never really had appointments apart from dentists and opticians and they were just kept on the kitchen calendar. Now I lead a busy life and I find the phone is best for all things I do because the phone is always with me to check on when people suggest meetings, I can quickly check whether I am free. I still have the kitchen calendar but don't really need it but I still use it to see when the moon changes are. I kept diaries all my life until the mid 1990s, but for life, not appointments, and recorded in them each night. I destroyed them all about 15 years ago in a fire. I no longer wanted them and did not want others to read them when I am gone.
ReplyDeleteRachel, my diary is always with me too. My phone, my diary and my car keys. It used to be my wallet too but these days I rarely need cash or credit cards because I use my phone and the coins for gratuities are in my pocket.
DeleteInteresting post. I always imagine you as cool, mellow, not flustered about much of anything.
ReplyDeleteCrossing out isn't a problem for me. Writing the lines on a slant, I can be half way down the page on a diagonal.
I toss old journal entries after I tear out important pages. My oldest journal pages are from the early 1970s. I note that my prettiest handwriting is from when I was a stay at home mom. It was also the time when my PTSD met my Postpartum blues.
Maywyn, it seems to me that your journals have played an important part in your life.
DeleteI am almost at the point of not worrying about crossing out. I already cross out in my journals, so I'm going in the right direction! Familiar habits are comforting, so I understand your attachment to your leather cover. Technology can be a little dispiriting at times.
ReplyDeleteJabblog, there is definitely something about the written word (instead of the electronic word) that I find comforting and essential.
DeleteI am still manual. Apart from prefering it, I don't want my data used to train AI systems, or stored somewhere for them to retrieve. They know everything online.
ReplyDeleteTasker, as I said, I don't keep my appointment details on line. However, any 'public body' appointments are on line anyway and, to be honest, I've given up worrying about it.
DeleteWe use a mixture of old technology and new but given my writing has deteriorated so badly, I rarely write. Several years ago when oh holidays in another state, I needed to see a doctor. Of course there was the paperwork associated with a first time visit, and what joy! They had computers set up and I could enter the required information there. Luckily no one seems to really check your medical paperwork. I would be asked to do mine again. Six Covid vaccinations at the same place and I've had to fill in two sheets of paperwork each time. Next time I will take photos after I've filled the forms in and just leave a blank date. I can them print them out at home.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, I've never had to give medical information in England but, fortunately, in Scotland the information seems to be available whichever hospital I attend.
DeleteI keep a calendar in my kitchen and also keep the calendar in my cellphone now. The phone calendar is so handy and will remind me of appointments and I am glad I have gotten used to using it.
ReplyDeleteEllen, I just didn't persevere with the phone which for a while I used intending to 'go digital'.
DeleteThere are many good ways to keep organized and a diary is one of them . I am hopelessly disorganized. It's a good thing that the MM looks after me.
ReplyDeleteRed, I suppose it doesn't matter what one does provided that one knows where and when we are to be somewhere.
DeleteThis will be my first year using my phone diary only as last year I found I more and more often used the phone rather than my paper diary. And the phone has an added attraction, it tells me what day it is. Also it's easier to figure out a typo than it is to decipher my writing. I wonder will I miss my notebook diary? Time will tell.
ReplyDeleteI need a special device to remind me to leave my name.
ReplyDeletePauline, I shall be interested to know how it goes.
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ReplyDeleteLet me try again. For Christmas, I received a pretty little appointment book and I vowed (as I always do), that this would be the one that I used. It lay on the coffee table for a time, and then I put it on the shelf underneath the coffee table and...sigh...well...I kind of forgot about it.
ReplyDeleteThis morning I realized that I had an appointment coming up and was trying to plan a little trip around that. I checked my appointments in my phone and realized, to my shame, that I hadn't entered it. I had to call the office and have them look it up for me. I entered it in my phone.
I read your post, and I thought of my little book. Once again, I made a vow to make good use of that little book. I cannot say that I am comfortable with my phone, really, and that very morning had proven that my skills are not 100%. So I got my little book out and opened it to enter four things, and discovered to my amazement that the forgotten appointment that I hadn't entered in my phone had been entered in my little book! (And my scrawl was so sloppy that I felt as if I'd ruined the whole book.
Debby, that sounds exactly like the sort of thing I'd do!
DeleteI can't remember the last time I wrote an actual letter, however, I write, and answer, a huge amount of Emails every day. That's enough!
ReplyDeleteCro, you certainly are one of the most diligent of bloggers.
DeleteI use my phone to keep track of what I am meant to be doing and when - especially as I can no longer trust my memory to do it! Separately, I also briefly record daily life in a journal. I've kept one of those, with the odd break, for the last forty years (most of them are stored away in a box).
ReplyDeleteMargaret, I kept a journal many many years ago but I was never dilligent enough and no sooner would I find the enthusiasm than it would evaporate.
DeleteLike you, I have my phone always with me, but do not use its calendar/diary function.
ReplyDeleteI love my books and have used the same format for many years, too; they allow me not only to keep appointments and remind me of birthdays etc., but I also take notes of each day as to where I walked, what the weather was like, sometimes even what we had for a meal on weekends, what mountain we climbed during a hiking holiday and so on. Occasionally, I even stick tickets for concerts etc. in it, and it happens fairly regularly that O.K. and I wonder when this or that was, and I can pull out my diary and look it up (often enough, I can find it on my blog, too).
No, I really do not want to miss that, even if my handwriting is illegible to others than myself.
Graham, so far I never had a letter or card from you with anything crossed out, but if it should happen, I would not mind at all - as you say, it's about spontaneity, too.
Meike, you are so methodical that you certainly put my efforts to shame. It took me a long time to accept that genuine spontaneity is so much more readable that 'carefully crafted' spontaneity.
DeleteI have never kept a diary, so I have no experience of the trauma caused by losing it! The closest I come to keeping a journal are the notes I make daily when I am travelling, latterly so that I have information for my blog report that follows, but in the past to remind me of the precise location where I observed my first bird of a given species, or other noteworthy natural history events. It would cause me a little anguish if I lost some of those, although I have to confess that the notes are cryptic, and while fully understandable shortly after the trip, often become gibberish defying understanding twenty years later! I doubt that I can discipline myself to change my ways now!
ReplyDeleteDavid, I just couldn't operate without a diary. Tomorrow I have three appointments one of which could be at either of two venues, one of which could be at one of many venues and one which is at a fixed venue. My brain ceased long ago to be able to hold all that information made weeks in advance.
DeletePerhaps I interpreted “diary” a little too literally. I have a huge appointment pad on my desk on which I mark down appointments, but I don’t have a pocket diary that I carry with me.
DeleteAs a busy Head of English and classroom teacher, keeping a diary solely connected with work was vital. Without it, I would not have been able to keep up with my many responsibilities. It also contained vital phone numbers. At first I used a desk diary but for the last ten or fifteen years I used a pocket diary simply because I was often away from my desk when I needed to refer to things or make new memos to myself.
ReplyDeleteYP, I'd be very much in the same situation as you were.
DeleteI haven't been using pocket diaries for years. A year or two ago, I threw away all of my old ones. They all showed the same pattern every year: Rather detailed daily notes the first few weeks of every year, but after that dwindling into nothing but notes of important appointments... For the last 15 years or so I note such things on a wall calendar in my kitchen, and certain things in the calendar on my phone (if I want to set an alarm to remind me). For birthdays I have a separate birthday calendar on the notice board in my study. It's resusable from year to year as it only marks the date, not the day of week. From there I also transfer some to the annual kitchen calendar. (Just did so after reading your blog post - thanks for the reminder!) I actually also have a pocket diary again. But that one I only use for certain health-related notes. As for general "what did I do when", the most reliable sources now are either my blog, or my bank statements!
ReplyDeleteMonica, my kitchen calendar is mainly used for things like bin collection days which run on a very strange set of different cycles depending on the bin contents.
DeleteI've never really been a keeper of diaries or journals for thoughts or appointments. I mostly manage to keep it all in my head though there are times when I need to call a place and say "I know I have an appointment coming but can you give me the details?"
ReplyDeleteModern SMS reminders are helpful, I find.
At work I have a large paper clip with scrap paper in it. I take notes on the paper and keep the sheets which contain information I might need in the future. We could compare it to a rough diary and I would be lost without it
Kylie, you obviously have a brain with a 'remember' function that I was born without (and I'm not being sarcastic - I really was born with very little capacity to remember things and it's dogged me all my life). I really would be wandering aimlessly without a diary. I have four 'appointments' today and it actually means that I am constantly looking at the clock and the diary because being late is even more anathema to me.
DeleteNot only have I never kept a diary, Graham, but in fact have never even owned one. I know there are various journaling apps (Apple recently came out with an online one) but those do not appeal to me. I do enter appointments on my phone and also on a paper calendar, which I prefer. I also keep various handwritten notes to myself which are either on pieces of paper or in a notebook on my computer workspace.
ReplyDeleteBeatrice that is what I generally use my diary for but I have to have everything in one place and available to me all the time.
DeleteI still keep a diary that I write my daily doings in (that is, not an appointment diary) I used to get beautiful ones from the Sierra Club which had a fantastic photo on every week's page. I can't remember when I stopped using them or why , so it must have been a while ago now!
ReplyDeleteJenny, my diary is essentially, an appointments diary with reminders. It's perfect for dating photos etc.
DeleteWe have become so accustomed to being able to edit and curate our message on computers that we forget that crossings out are part of the creative and expressive process. They leave a trail, create some insight. Enjoy the humanity of it.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Tigger's Mum, forgot to check Spam. Interestingly I found one of my own replies in there. Obviously Blogger didn't like it!🙄. You are reight of course but I'd not seen it that way. Thank you.
DeleteIt is interesting how you can't let go of some things from the past. I love my Apple calendar, which is synced with Bill'sso we don't double book anything. I love how it reminds me of up coming events. However, I still write up a medical diary of Bill's symptoms and treatment.
ReplyDeleteDiane, synching the two calendars is a great idea. Unfortunately I have noone to synch with these days.
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