Keeping Diaries

I've kept diaries all of my life, ever since I was a child. I've always found it a really great way to express yourself and release emotions. Keeping diaries has really helped me to gain a better understanding of myself and how my feelings work, and I've learned a lot about myself this way. I have many different types of diaries, not only the one where I write my inner most thoughts. Some of the diaries I have go way back to my childhood and some are from my teenage years. I have diaries that my best friend and I kept together, where we would each write a little bit about what we did that day, sort of like an on-going story of our teenage life. Sometimes we just wrote down song lyrics that we related to at that time and sometimes we made up silly poems or just drew silly pictures, but I love to read this diary now that I am older. It never fails to shock me or have me in fits of laughter at the memories. I look back and can't believe how much I have changed and how different my life is now.

Other diaries I have are holiday diaries that I kept as a child. They are very basic, but I love and treasure them dearly. One of my favourite diaries is the one I kept when my family and I went on holiday to Cairns, in Queensland, Australia in 1990. We emigrated to Australia, from England, in December 1988 and had been living in Australia for one year when my mother won the holiday on a radio competition, it was for a 2 adults and 2 children to go on holiday to Cairns for one week. It was the best holiday I ever had. I collected leaflets, tickets, napkins, postcards, maps, photos and many other things and stuck them all in the diary. I am so glad I kept that diary, because now I can look back and remember all of the things we did, people we met, see all of the places we went and remember the things we saw there, some of which I would have otherwise forgotten.

I still keep diaries like this, and am in the process of finishing one from my most recent holiday to Hastings, along the East Sussex coastline of England. I also keep a personal diary and I know that in another 20 years, I will look back and see how much my life has changed and will be shocked at how far I've come. I think keeping a diary is a lovely way to put your life into perspective and to treasure all of the experiences you have in your life, good or bad. I love to pull out my old diaries when I'm having a bad day and laugh at all the funny things that have happened to me throughout my life, or see how much better my life is now than it was, which never fails to cheer me up a little.

As well as keeping diaries, I also love to read books in the style of diaries. A favourite of mine was one I read a little while ago called 'Diary of an Ordinary Woman' by Margaret Forster. It was a brilliant read and I would definately recommend it to anyone who likes to keep diaries, or enjoys this sort of book.