...journals / diaries, I'm not sure when one word became more fashionable than the other, and now there's something called 'bullet journaling' which is very big business. I'm envious of those who sketch each day or event (and here are some brilliant ones on Instagram) or create beautifully artistic entries. It isn't quite what I strive or have the time for, though I have now succumbed to the joys of washi tape for a bit of added interest.
But hold on, I'm feeling a bit smug because 2018 was the first full and complete year that I have EVER written a journal entry every single day.
2004 /2005 don't really count. They were the as-and-when years, but both include everything I read alongside life events, and I note there was a lot of testing of fountain pens and inks various (Diamine a disaster of bleeding through Moleskine pages). There are pictures of afternoon tea in the Pump Room in Bath, a visit to Sylvia Plath's grave in Heptonstall, I was on Open Book talking to Mariella about fiction written by and for women of a certain age (it was all very controversial at the time) , Newbooksmag published a piece I had written on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and all of this I would have forgotten.
Then of course 2006, dovegreyreader scribbles happened and things seemed to end up on a screen, not handwritten on the page, and before I knew it another eleven years had flown by with a succession of failed journal attempts. I've had some help this last year mind you, in the form of Robert Macfarlane's Word of the Day over on Twitter.
7am on the dot there it is, a new word with its meaning, source, application and variable contexts and an image to illustrate, and the 'likes' rack up with astonishing speed. It would seem I am not alone in grasping the word and applying it to my day, or a moment I have known. Tweeters various and many will add their own understanding or experience of the 'word' and fascinating threads will follow, often with images from their own lives.
Lacking the early-morning wherewithal to know quite how to start my daily diary entry...
'It's a bit gloomy outside...'
'Really nice sunrise...'
Or the discipline to return to it at night with a report on the day, I started to use of the Word of the Day as my first entry, pondered it, often found a memory surfacing, or stumbled across an example of the word through the day, or threw it into a sentence and realised I now had the spring board from which to build the sort of things I wanted my daily journal to be for.
Nor are the words all 'primroses and otters' , no indeed, there is plenty of meat on the word bone to stop any downward descent into sentimentalism or nostalgia. Many in recent weeks have been extremely pertinent to the political treacle through which we are wading; a word will often tell it slant, reflecting an event or a moment, and the inference is never missed over on the twitter-sphere.
That said I've pulled out a word from last year because it demonstrates perfectly what so often happens..
"kusumashayaripaatin" I don't actually think I've quoted this Word of the Day since April 5th 2018, but I well remember they day and the image that flew unbidden into my mind...
It was the Tinker's birthday and I thought of this...
And then that sun halo happened...
And I noticed it because I was looking, and maybe because I was looking for meaning and signs too. I went for a wander across to the village church and noticed a whole lot more along the way. I think what I'm trying to say is that the 7am diary entry habit, and the thinking that follows, has all made me more perceptive and in unexpected ways.
Of course it could all have gone off the rails each time Robert Macfarlane took a well-earned Twitter break, but on those occasions, minus my prop, I realise that by now I have trained myself well and used my own Memory of the Day instead and have quite surprised myself with the innovation.
All this might seem like terribly over-wrought and introspective angst about something that should be so simple, I mean Virginia Woolf made it look so easy and so fascinating, whilst I have long struggled with the spectre of the Deadly Boring Diary which might be why I have lapsed repeatedly. The crunch comes now, sitting here at my desk and daring to read back through 2018, and I am pleasantly surprised to find how much more attentive and observant something so easy as thinking about a single word has made me.
There are quotes from poetry I've enjoyed, a lot of Mary Oliver, RIP Mary, how thrilled I am to have found you...
Details about books read or in progress until I decided to ship that all across to a Reading Journal...
Details about flowers, arriving swallows, walks on Dartmoor, walks to the woods, amazing skies, moments, events, occurrences, but all bolstered by that daily word.
I know we've talked about this before but please do share your journalising (made up word) tendencies if you want to...
And which journal do you use ...I still use the small, lined Moleskine for day-to-day even though the paper quality seems to be deteriorating. The Kayaker bought me my current bright yellow one for my birthday, for winter cheer. A large page requires large thoughts and that phases me a little too much, but I'm on the brink of going across to the plain version. I have suddenly discovered the unfettered joy of the plain page.
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