I keep a five year diary.
I started keeping a five year diary when I was a newly minted teenager.
The diary itself was made of bright pink plasticky stuff, pretending to be leather, and had a pretendie lock on it. I mean it did have a lock on it, a nice brass one, but the key was so shonky and so generic that I guess it was just there for decorative purposes. Anyway I wrote in that diary for five years, hardly missing a day, using all manner of codes to try to hide from prying eyes what I was really up to.
When I left home at the age of 18 I didn’t take my diary with me; and I didn’t start a new one. Probably for the best, all things considered. The diary never moved house with my parents some years later, so I guess Mum probably read it and despaired at how relatively boring my life had been. But who knows?
Anyway, I’d got out of the habit of recording a wee note at the end of each day, and reflecting on Things.
Until my Godson gave me a five year diary as a birthday present during Covid. He had noticed that I was churning out regular updates on socials on a whole raft of projects – my #100DayProject each year, or my #TemperatureBlanket. He recognised that my comfort zone included recording daily data on my life. Seems mad when I describe it like that. But it’s true, I enjoy that collection and recording, and ordering of data. I love seeing the big picture when you look at a series of recorded data points, the chance for reflection when you can see how life has (or hasn’t) changed. One of my current ambitions is to find interesting ways to visualise data using textiles, but that’s for another day. But if you’re even vaguely interested in this idea, then you might like Jordan Cunliffe’s book, Record, Map and Capture.
When I first started a daily diary again, I focused on facts, trying to capture all of what happened during the hours since I had woken up that morning. I soon realised that this is impossible and impractical to do just before you go to sleep, with only 5 short lines of text. And also, it doesn’t really capture the essence of the day does it?
And of course during that first year of a five year diary you are writing ‘blind’. Although I have a hinterland, the diary has none. Previous years just don’t exist, so there is no ‘Ooooh, look what we were doing a year ago’ moment. So, the reflection comes later. Much later.
At the end of this year I will have completed that five year diary, filling each page with a few thoughts once I’m in my pyjamas and settled for the night.
There have been times when it’s been a great comfort to see what I was doing 1, 2, 3 or 4 years ago. When Mum could no longer cope with phone calls, I could re-live earlier conversations. One evening I enjoyed reading that a year previously she had told me on the phone that she’d been making lots of jellies for King Haakon of Norway.
Back then, the year before had always been somehow not as bad as the year I was in… it’s easy to see now how the slow decline in Mum’s health (and her life) mirrored the decline in other parts of my life – my own health, some important relationships, work too has not always been going well. All of it is recorded, day by agonisingly slow day. So, there was always a sense of longing, of nostalgia for the past, even the near past, when things seemed better. Or if not exactly better, at least less bad.
But. And there is A But to this. I am (at last) beginning to look forward to a different, more hopeful, more enjoyable future ahead. I look back at previous entries, and am grateful that it genuinely feels like I am beyond the very worst of times for now.
They say ‘This Too Shall Pass’. And I think it has passed.
And, coincidentally, as we start 2026, I will literally start with a new blank page. I’ll pop the current diary in a box (quite possibly the box that already holds my mother’s five year diaries, because there is no room in the box that contains my grandmother’s). And I will start again, with a head and a heart full of memories…. and five more years ahead of me to fill with joy and love. And all the other bits.
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Thank you for reading this.
Mostly this blog has been about my relationship with Mum and her dementia. So if that might be your thing, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
I’m not sure what direction the blog will go in now, it’s likely that it will be slivers of my life, curated for you.
Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.
Shewolfinthevalley 