Do you still use a diary?

[McFlurryMaddie 270]

Yeah, I'll have to admit, diaries are, well, dying in this modern age where they are replaced by social medias, etc. where you could express your feelings in a more "open" manner. The purpose of a diary is mainly to express feelings you don't feel secure telling other people. A diary is like a friend who is willing to listen to anything and not give away a single word. Well, that is unless you let someone else read your diary. But anyways.

As to answer, yes, I do still use a diary. As I have stated above, I use it to write down what I'm feeling. Keeping a diary keeps me occupied. Sometimes I even read past diary entries aloud to myself and find myself cracked up just in a matter of seconds. Writing in a diary keeps me calm and takes away some of the pressure from me. I like it so much, though I don't really write everyday. I just write in the "big" stuff that took place in my life. Not like I write every single things in. 

[PCutter 127]

Why even bother when one day they'll be discovered sooner or later? No matter how well it's hidden

[Fluttershutter 3,392]

Nah, I've tried but I can never keep up with it. I have thoughts throughout the day that I think are interesting but by the end of the day I forget stuff and I'm not in the mood to write.

[Dreambiscuit 12,282]

I don’t keep a diary in the traditional sense. There’s no point in creating something private that just begs others to stick their noses into it. But I do keep a ‘happy diary’ which is just one line noting the best things that happened that day. Not details, just headings. I started doing this as a way of fighting depression when I was younger, and it just became a habit that I still maintain today.  

[Adorable Lovestar 244]

I need to use one, for various reasons.

[Mini 455]

I've been keeping a dream diary for the past 4 years. It's a really weird diary.

[Envy 6,480]

I used to. I think I started most consistently in my early teens. At that point I loved documenting the weather (especially the temperatures). Often I gossiped or wrote about crushes. In the mid 2000s with the rise of Xanga and LiveJournal I began to use those for my diaries. For better or for worse, as I had public Xanga accounts that my IRL friends and acquaintances followed and boy is what I wrote in my mid to late teens some of the most cringeworthy stuff ever. Lol. In the late 00's I moved to a more private format on LJ with only my closest friends, and that is the only format I really use to this day. Although I don't make entries daily like I did back in the day. In fact, I can go months without updating. lol

 

Now for a tangent:

Despite the cringe stuff that was public, I'm glad I kept all of those diaries. My weather documentation just shows that I'm not crazy in thinking that the climate has changed drastically where I live over the years. It's also been quite enlightening on my early religious beliefs and my coming to accept my sexuality. In my regular memory, I don't remember ever having the belief that homosexuality was against my religious beliefs, but I wrote about it once (although passed by that phase pretty quickly lol) or that I once sat next to an atheist in band in my freshman year who was a former member of our church, and I thought he was the worst person ever because he left the church and became an atheist. (he was a jerk, but I didn't separate that from him being an ex-member of my then church that became an atheist)

Both of those are such a shock to me, and would have been completely forgotten if I hadn't wrote about them, because it's just so hard for me to believe that I ever thought those things. Our memory isn't as good as we think it is. I only wish I had wrote more so I could better understand the context of those thoughts, because they sure as heck don't make any sense to me with my memory as it is. (my current memory being that I was raised so liberal that I never understood why people thought there was anything wrong with homosexuality, and most certainly did not connect it with my then religious beliefs, because if I had, it would have shattered my belief that "Christianity = Good" (which happened later). My memories in relation to atheism are that I did not even have a concept of non-belief until I ran into an atheist online who introduced the concept to me and it clicked pretty quickly. The atheist in band incident happened the year prior to this, proving that I did see that non-belief was a thing, but I rejected it the core.)

So yeah, that was a tangent, I have no idea why I shared that here. I guess you can chalk it up to me having spent so much time in bed recovering from my surgery that I'll jump on any opportunity to make the time pass. lol Also I was trying to make a point in there somewhere about how important is to keep diaries due to our flawed memories and how it can help us understand our being better... But I went off on a tangent about how it happened for me personally, and this is just a topic asking if we keep a diary and nothing else. Geez, I'm a mess.

[碇 シンジン 27,442]

i dont think so i used to use it but quickly i saw that it was a waste of time

[Splashee 28,602]

I couldn't spell as a kid, so I never used a diary. Even if I had, what would I write? Who would read it? Waste of time!

 

(I still can't spell today)

[Clawdeen 25,299]

I've tried to get back into journaling but it's hard because I forget about it like the very next day lol

[Longhaul 9,871]

Keeping a journal or diary has never worked out for me, in that I tend to unlock very unpleasant things inside my head, and they keep repeating themselves page after page.  I stopped doing it and now I only blog or whatever when I have something positive to write about.  And even then it goes through about a kajillion revisions before it sees the light of day.

[Do svidaniya 2,084]

Once, but I wasn't using it very constructively at the time and was just filling it with vitriol and self hatred every few weeks so I stopped.  Now I have a journal for more creative focused things. 

[Crypty Scribbles 6,770]

I do! Oh mai! I could write a book about journalling 

Edited July 16 by Crypty Scribbles

[ComanderZhabikKlavik 5,221]

I still keep my personal diary, but I haven't written anything there this month, I need to fix that. Keeping a diary is a useful thing for me, so I need to write there every day.

I don't hide my personal diary because I write illegibly and it's unlikely that anyone will understand my notes except me. And if I need to write something secret, I'll encrypt it in decimal code or write in English instead of Russian. O I came up with an even more reliable way! I'll write the text in English, encrypt it in decimal code and write this encrypted message in the diary. 

[Raskolnikov 1,753]

I stopped when it became clear it was irrelevant to vent and vent when nothing changes and there is nothing left to say at all. Haven't touched it in years, totally pointless.

[Iforgotmybrain 7,852]

Kinda. Only when I think it’ll be useful. Sometimes I just get these specific trains of thought that I can’t stop thinking about, this is really common while I’m trying to fall asleep. And I find it’ll help if I write those thoughts down, basically helps my mind move on from them and onto something else that hopefully it won’t get stun locked on.

[MLP Golden Breezie 1,413]

Yes, once upon a time when I was still little in school, I used to use a diary. But now I'm completely over my years and I don't use it anymore. Even though I still think about the good times, at least I know I'll enjoy my life since I'm now an adult.

[ExplosionMare 26,554]

I tried to but I can never fully commit to journaling.

[Snoopy Fan 12,321]

I’ve never used a diary.

[DubWolf 20,015]

I use many a dairies  . Milk, cheese, butter, sour cream, you name it  .