My Diary

I tried to start a traditional diary once.

It lasted two days. It takes a long time. Your arm kinda hurts. Did I mention it takes a long time? Also, someone can look over your shoulder and read your deepest, darkest secrets. And it does require a big chunk of time. You're not alone if you don't want to write a diary for those reasons: I didn't. What's the upside? Reflecting about your life later on? Not worth it. And I agree.

I have a diary now. It's lasted almost a year. Still going strong. But my diary is different than most. And in this article, I will tell you how I decided to use it, and how you can too.  So one day I found myself thinking: if I was writing an autobiography, and each day was a chapter in it, what would this one be called? And I kept pondering that. I started writing them down at some point. And it stuck.  I found a format: [Thing A]; [Thing B]; ...; [Thing N]*, where each thing is a "keyphrase." This keyphrase triggers a memory of what happened that moment. Often we remember lots of things, but cannot recall them. This method helps out a lot, and I can determine what happened pretty much all of the time from that keyphrase.** For those of you who want an example, which is real: Sat 01/26: Drawing Pictures for Social Studies; The Egg; March, Regrowth, March. By the way, Drawing Pictures for Social Studies refers to a children's book assignment I had to write and illustrate for social studies (it isn't pretty); The Egg refers to a Magic: The Gathering card I made; and March, Regrowth, March is another Magic reference: it refers to a play sequence where you play March of the Multitudes, then Regrowth it, and finally convoke out March with the Soldier tokens you made.*** Bet you wouldn't have guessed that from reading just what I had written in my diary.

It doesn't take much time. Your arm feels fine. Did I mention it doesn't take much time? Also, if someone sees it over your shoulder, they won't be able to determine your deepest, darkest secrets. And it's pretty fast too. So I recommend this to everyone who has ever wanted a diary without the commitment. I've had lots of success with it, and I hope you will too.  Thanks for reading the words I wrote. Remember to remember. —beautifulthorns

Originally aired February 27, 2019

*You don't have to have 14 things every day, to be clear: ideally you want 2-4.  **The two main exceptions are when my handwriting is illegible and when I make the keyphrase too vague, like "Math Homework." ***One time I repeated this a lot to make, like 100 Soldier tokens. Then the foundations were shaken. (I still won.)