Dear diary...

Dear diary….

The first diary I kept was of my annual family trip to Mooloolaba, Queensland, and it revolved around what I ate for breakfast, lunch and tea and came complete with empty sugar sachets and chocolate bar wrappers. Let’s face it; seven year olds don’t have much emotional baggage to offload.

Tummy Pains of the Mind (I became a little more creative – and tragic) documented the highs and lows of my adolescent love life. Even now, it can induce a tear or two if I re-read my flurry of thoughts. I worked three jobs, went to university and fell hard when rejected by a suitor but there were some amazing highs.

Here’s a tragic snippet to myself:

“Dave*, I’ll always love you for what you gave me, how you made me laugh and I [sic] felt as though I had a true evergreen friend – well I got that wrong you deciduous prick!”

I have quite a collection of travel diaries and still can’t believe that I whitewater rafted down the Zambezi River at Victoria Falls, Africa, despite being terrified of being dumped by a wave. Rapids are waves!

Last year, I started a journal again and worked out pretty quickly that when there were big gaps I was contented and had no need to blurt all over the page.  When I write a diary it gives a voice to my raw emotions. I’m not interested in writing about what I eat or the trivial stuff anymore.

Then there is my 24-7 diary that I live by, marking sport training, meetings, dinners, appointments and kinder and school events. Anything and everything gets scribbled in.

The diary is a versatile medium where we communicate our inner thoughts. Some like to sweat it out at the gym, tune in to their IPod, tie themselves up in knots at yoga and others like to grab their diary and disappear behinds its pages. You can always look back on it when you are in a more subjective mood and you have the written memories forever. Smile. Cringe. Cry. Laugh

Tummy Pains in the Mind is already a collectors item – for hopeless romantics anyway…

* Not his real name of course – that’s between my diary and me