My 30 Day Diary Writing Challenge
It was walking along the excellent Welsh Coastal path (above) with Debbie that I decided on my next challenge, to write a diary for the next 30 days. It was clear to me that I wanted to write it as part of my blog, because diary posts would document the emergence of ideas and capture aspects of my life that might eventually emerge as blog posts, It also appeals to me to have all of my thoughts in one place. But using my blog made use of all the infrastructure that’s grown up around it, the writing tools, the storage, the RSS feeds, search, the automated integration with Evernote and Memento etc.
There was a challenge though as I needed to filter my blog so that the main RSS feed and the home page didn’t show the diary. I documented how I set all of this up in this post, but the bottom line is that diary posts can only be accessed in four ways, directly through diary.seasidelife.com, through the diary category, through the diary RSS feed and through search, so only the determined will see them.
Writing the diary has been something of a revelation, I’ve written diary blog posts for many months before, but writing a diary is different as there’s no pressure to deliver. I’m writing the diary for myself, I can write as much or as little as I want, but something always happens worth writing down. When I first started though it felt like a bit of a chore, but my the end of the month reviewing my day became one of the highlights. I found that I appreciated my days more, I made more of an effort to do something useful each day and to try and tease out of the daily experience some lessons that would help me live better tomorrow. It’s really been a surprising delight. Writing in public on my blog has also worked out nicely, even some of the kids have started to read my entries which is cute.
I’m gradually trying to capture more useful information in the posts too, places that I’ve been, books I’ve read, challenges, delights, ideas, failures, successes, it’s improved my clarity of thinking. I’m definitely going to keep it up! I’m particularly anticipating reading last years posts on a daily basis next year and on into the future to keep my memories alive, losing my memory is already an issue and diary writing is the best tool I know of to mitigate it’s decline.
The titles (in reverse order) of my first batch of posts are listed below, for interest, and also to show off how clever I am to be able to generate it in just a few clicks of a mouse 
another example of the efficiency of using a single platform for all of my writing:
- Flamborough Head
- Lawn Care
- Whipped And Bruised
- A New Toy
- Amazon Deliveries
- Plan’s Dashed
- Living Near Water
- Raised Beds
- The End of The Holidays
- The Distant Hills
- Wasp Tales
- Appreciating The Familiar
- Friends and Family
- Watching The Sun Rise
- The Kale Just Keeps On growing
- The First Twinge Of Boredom
- I’ve never Worked So Hard
- Starting To Get Fit
- Outdoor Swimming
- Exploring Nottingham
- Canal Walking
- Making Future Plans
- The Preston Guild Wheel
- Preparing For A Short Break
- Patching the lawn
- Back To Nature
- A Day Of Grumbles
- Car Washing
- Runner Beans
- Leaving Home
- Changing Plans
- Homeward Bound
- Fantastic Four, Python And Shopping
- Swansea Cliff Top Walk
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[…] up to do a bit of writing and I struggled through a post on medication withdrawal and another on my experience of diary writing. They really were a struggle, because my concentration is terrible and I made dozens of […]
[…] Now that I have my allotment I’m writing an allotment diary as well as a personal diary, it provides a similar purpose, but it’s also a really useful practical record that I can use each year to help me plan. My allotment diary is a ‘hidden’ section of my main blog that can be reached at http://steves.allotmentnews.com/ or the ‘allotment news’ category of the blog http://steves.seasidelife.com/category/allotment-news/. I started this diary writing habit with a 30 day challenge. […]