Do you still use a diary?

[KatonRyu 1,026]

I have a journal on my PC, but I haven't written in it in ages. I intended to actually write down events from my day in it, but in practice I only use it to vent, and I don't feel the need to do that nearly as much as I once did. That said, I do occasionally still use it to ramble about ideas for fanfics and stories I have.

[McFlurryMaddie 268]

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 2,114]

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 8,022]

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 243]

I need to use one, for various reasons.

[Mini 451]

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

[Envy 5,998]

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 27,427]

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

[Splashee 28,537]

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)