The first day of the rest of your life type thing.

Ok so today the third person said to me "You should write a blog" and I caved.

I'm completely willing to try my hand at this and I know it's not that hard, but I've always been terrible at sticking to this sort of thing. I'm a great admirer of those who can stick to keeping a diary of their life, such as Samuel Pepys, Alan Clark, Che Guevara, Sylvia Plath etc. but the truth is, as much as I enjoy reading about the minutiae of people’s lives, I've just never had the inclination to chat about myself.

Thinking about it that’s a bit of an understatement, because I know full well that I’ve spoiled at least 10 diaries in the past as over the years I've started numerous memoirs at various periods in my life – after an argument when I felt the need to write and let it all out, when I bought a cool looking diary (I’m a bit of a stationery-aholic), when I was given a diary as a present, when I tried to get organised – and don’t get me wrong, each time I tried I meant to continue with it. I really meant it when I wrote my contact details in the front, or added the very few phone numbers I actually knew in my childhood, or even adding my lecture timetable in my first year at uni. “This time I’m definitely going to use this”. But with me if just one day it was too big for my bag then the habit of keeping it with me was gone, and the next thing I knew it was two years later. Oops.

These days I do actually have a diary, but I use it for recording the things that I do and in my experience the only way to ensure I keep a diary is to rely on it. It started as a work thing to record meetings and deadlines really, as up until a few years ago my social calendar consisted of occasional drinks at the weekend and that was about it. Since then though I’ve dramatically expanded my repertoire to include the theatre, dinner, evening classes, parties, meetings, the cinema, talks and more so now I really need it because otherwise I’d truly have no idea what I was doing this week! In fact I’m starting to feel like Yes Man – great book, have you read it?

Obviously the real difference with a diary is made when you feel you actually have something to put in it. When I called this blog A boring life is an early death, I did that not because I’m being ironic, but because I’ve been there in the social wilderness and I can vouch for that statement as feeling true. Self imposed I might add, I didn’t do anything crazy and get all embarrassed, I just needed time to myself. The problem with that is, when you’re ready to come out of it things have passed you by and you need to start from scratch, which I did, and things are very different now, but that’s another story.

Back to the diary – my entries are short and sweet, some might say a la Bridget Jones I guess, but I have to admit I find it fascinating to look over last year’s diary and actually have a record of what I was up to. Inevitably there are the “Oh yeah!” moments when I relive something I’d totally forgotten and that’s a nice feeling. In fact I’ve even started to note extras after the event that weren’t planned just so next year I’ll be able to relive a few moments in extra detail. E.g. the original entry was Tom’s birthday but it now reads Tom’s birthday, Slim Jims + The Cuckoo. See what I mean?

Maybe that feeling is the reason that people record their everyday moments or perhaps it’s just for posterity once they are gone. Either way diaries are amazing creations, like personal books just for you and all about you. I'm not making any promises, but that's very cool.