I’ve kept a diary/small journal for 30 years and decided this year will be my last one. Do any other grans keep one? ?

As I have said on GN previously, I have kept a daily journal since 1957 when I was 14. I was inspired by a BBC drama about Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist (played by Peter Sallis who was Clegg in Last of the Summer Wine).

It just became a habit and I always write it up at the end of the day before I go to bed. Occasionally it's next morning if we have been out or unwell or something has cropped up. When I started it was small pocket diaries with bits of paper added if I had a lot to record. I progressed to "page-a day" A5 size desk diaries many years ago and never have any problem filling the page - and sometimes more.

I am going to bequeath my many, many A5 size journals to The Great Diary Project
www.thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk/

It would feel a shame to burn or destroy the millions of words I have written and events I recorded, over all these years.

I do enjoy dipping into it and reading what I was doing on the same date, in different years, as I am dipping!.

I am convinced that my good memory is because I have written things down and they have become embedded in my memory bank!

I love my journals.

I write down what is occupying my mind just about every day, and always have done. I write in ordinary exercise books. I had volumes and volumes, but when I was in hospital a couple of years ago I asked my trustworthy elder son to shred them, which he did. Since then I have missed being able to dip in and see how I was thinking five or ten years ago. I am still writing, so there will be more to replace the destroyed ones. I simply can’t imagine not writing about everyday life and thoughts.

I started writing a diary in my teens , I got obsessed about my siblings reading them and invented a code !
Years later I found them but couldn’t remember the code ! They got binned ?

I think it's a wonderful idea if it's for yourself. But if family members are likely to read them when you are gone, maybe choose which to keep.
I had to read through my late Mum's, which she had requested. But it was hard reading about her trials and tribulations. I wouldn't wish that on my children.

Oh no DerDer I bet that was a difficult request to comply with and although insightful (which is why your mum wanted you to read them) upsetting to I imagine. And once you ‘know’ something, you can’t ‘un-know it’ sadly.

aggie that made me laugh about a diary in code! Bletchley Park came to mind.
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Grandma70s I do wonder if (me) there’s also an element of habit ingrained over the years? I’ll be free of it soon ...

Gagagran you make me realise I’m a novice at this game! That’s some serious diary writing lady. Mine are less wordy but certainly will contain my thoughts & feelings of the time.

Actually when I re-read them during next year it will I’m sure be comforting to realise with hindsight that 9 times out of 10 our worst fears never happen.

My friend, now 59, has been keeping diaries since she was about 12. Very detailed with all the emotions and feelings she's experienced over the years.

I could never be bothered

But my Mum kept small ones with just dates if hair and the like .Saw the children. GC2 phoned. Family gone away etc etc. Always a mention of the weather.

I have a box full of them and there they'll stay until I've popped my clogs

I started going out with Orlin when we were both 15. We fell out for about 8 months when we were 18 and I went out with a lad of 20. WE WERE ON A BREAK. He had the most lovely mother and when we broke up, because Orlin came looking for me, I was upset at losing her.
Two years later Orlin and I got married and I received a package just before from the lovely mother.
It was a beautiful leather bound diary and a note saying that she hoped I’d be very happy but if there were ever times I felt sad or worried or even happy and want to share, to write to her in the diary, as in Dear Anne, never to be posted but always to feel she was a close friend.
I have, ever since 1970, kept a diary with every entry starting Dear Anne....
I never saw her again but have felt her friendship, funnily enough I never thought about her son or the connection until I wrote this post and realised how it might look.
I didn’t ever buy another diary just exercise books full of letters. Mostly cheery goings on but some deep and meaningful thoughts. Interestingly the deep and meaningful bits were only during less happy times.
Not sure if I want my boys to read them. Hopefully I have time to think about it.

I've got video's which contain many family members and friends, going back to the 80's, some of whom have since died, including my late H, but I can never bring myself to watch them. My D has them---I've got the video player.
GC when they were babies/ toddlers who are now in their 30's.

I agree Gannygangan those sound pretty boring diaries!
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LauraNorder that was a poignant tale, brought memories back for you of the lovely Anne. Yes, it’s a thing isn’t it when we’ve committed our feelings to paper. Like you, I’m not sure what to do with mine. I shall decide next year but I think paddyanne has given me the green light. It’s time.

EV it would be lovely to see your children as toddlers and your late husband smiling, family laughing together, but so sad at the same time to see how much time has passed and what has been lost.
Maybe one day.

Ooh that’s different EV a visual record of family life. Holidays and people. More than photographs so I’m not surprised to hear you’d find them a difficult watch now so many of the people you loved are no longer with you. Sorry, I don’t mean to make you sadder.

And yet.
It’s my thoughts that I’ve recorded. Some churned up feelings too at times. That’s why I’m thinking as they are personal they’re not for sharing. IYSWIM?

Urmstongran just don't throw them in a skip! Some years ago I half read a book the book wasn't very interesting by an author whose neighbour found 148 diaries in a skip and gave them to him to write a book about it! (Not saying yours will be uninteresting

A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip is the book.

www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/03/a-life-discarded-18-diaries-found-in-a-skip-alexander-masters-review-fourth-4th-estate-dido-davies

Urmstongran ??

EllanVannin

I've got video's which contain many family members and friends, going back to the 80's, some of whom have since died, including my late H, but I can never bring myself to watch them. My D has them---I've got the video player.
GC when they were babies/ toddlers who are now in their 30's.

I have loads of family videos too. I have no problem watching them, it's lovely to see my mother and father again. And don't forget they get more precious with time. Your grandchildren (and their children) will treasure them because they show people (ancestors) they never met and your children as youngsters.

I keep a daily diary, quite detailed and stored in hampers under my bed! There are one or two organisations who are interested in diaries - especially women’s. One I think is the British library and the other the Women’s Studies department at one of the London Universities. My younger son knows to send mine off.

yep! 40 years and still going strong! I choose a beautiful book of plain creamy paper and I write when I feel like it
My nursing days are my favourite years when I was so full of hope and wonder for the future unaware of the storm clouds that were looming in the shape of a husband who turned out to be an addict! Anyway happy granny now and still writing!

No. It would either be very boring "Cold weather today. Did the dusting and made soup for tea" sort of pointless stuff. If I laid bare all my innermost thoughts and feelings and memories, I'd be worried that I might die suddenly and I wouldn't want my family to be reading all that. So no point really!

Not since I was a teenager when my mother read it, freaked out at the content, burned it and gave me hell!??

I'm trying to journal myself out of a depression that hit me in summer last year. I can see I'm making progress, which is very reassuring. I do tend to only write in dark times - not often a journal, but sometimes "poetry" that I really need to hunt out and burn before my kids read it!

For 5 or 6 years, I kept a diary of my dreams, to try to encourage lucid dreaming. Didn't have much success with that, btw.
At the start of last year, I had bought a new notebook then decided to just pack it in. I burned all the past notebooks in our open fire.
I'm glad I stopped, as I've often had strange dreams in the last year and I wouldn't have wanted to give them attention so I could write them down.

'fraid I am not organised enough!! DH keeps my apointment diaries, heaven knows what for, I would chuck 'em all!!

Like some of you have said - a 'sort of' diary could be very interesting to our grandchildren etc. in future years but I have never kept a detailed diary.
However, when the Covid hit I completed a huge photo mission! I sorted all our thousands (NOT an exaggeration honestly) of photos that were in bags, tatty albums and boxes - ranging from the late 1800s through to now!
It was a mammoth task but lockdown meant I could devote all day every day - it took me five months (with a few days off!) but I now have a lovely set of albums.
They are all interesting as they are photo memories (births, marriages, deaths, holidays etc.) rather than long scripts but since March 2020 I have typed out a brief 'diary/record' each month of what we have achieved, what we've been allowed to do under lockdown or other restrictions alongside photos from having our flower bed raised etc. - jobs done during the pandemic.
Each month is just a few paragraphs but expressing the frustration at not being able to go to the bedside of dying relatives or being able to comfort or help the family when deaths have occurred. Things that hurt but also jobs achieved like the set of albums that I will now update monthly.
Our grandchildren and their children hopefully, will find them interesting when they learn about the Covid 2020 plague in their history lessons!
WE will be history
Imagine when we were learning about the world wars etc. at school - what if we'd been able to show Grandma's diary!

I kept a diary in my teens. It was very boring.

I started to keep one again at the beginning of the pandemic, feeling that it was the sort of event that should be recorded. Unfortunately, due to lockdown and thus life not being very eventful, it too is very boring!

My first diary dates back to 1971, 50 years ago! I only noted events and happenings, not my feelings, although I did do that for just one year, 1973. I haven’t read that one, but I think it will be interesting, like Government papers, I’ll keep it secret for the full 50 years. I am enjoying looking back at my life 50 years ago, in fact I see that the anniversary of my husband and my first date is coming up in May, it took us another eight years to get round to a wedding, but I think we’ll celebrate our 50th this May. After the last year any excuse for a celebration!

Remember 'Housewife 49' with Victoria Wood? That ordinary everyday stuff is gold dust to social anthropologists! Please don't throw away your diaries ladies! Even if you never read them again, they are worth doing. There is research evidence that keeping a diary helps to maintain and improve mental health - even if it's just 3 sentences a day. I have kept brief handwritten diaries for 30 years, but in 2017, when I was diagnosed with cancer, I started to keep a more detailed journal, because I had to record daily medication and symptoms, but also because it was uncertain how things would go. I treated myself to the paid version of Day One App for journaling. Honestly, it helped me to get through some very difficult times. Being physically unwell/depressed/anxious affects cognition, particularly memory, so recording what happens and how one feels is a boon. Now that I am well, the journal has changed emphasis somewhat. I include details of the weather, what I've done, perhaps how I feel, and a news summary, so I can tie up what's happening more widely to my daily life. This has been invaluable in the pandemic. It's so easy to forget what you thought and how you felt, even a short time ago, but I can always check in my journal. I could share what I've written, but one of the advantages is that I can be perfectly honest in it because nobody else sees it.