bullet journal
There’s my diary on the desk. It didn’t start out that way; it was a bullet journal originally. It’s a Moleskine, since those are the fancy diaries with the dotted grids suitable for bullet journals. I think the covers are leather. Oh well. I bought this years ago. At a guess it has .. 180, 200 pages? I’m up to page 158 right now. I number them myself. I’ve only ever used two different types of pens in it, both made by the same Japanese pen company, Zebra. I can’t say I know for sure why I’ve chosen that pen company as “my” pen company, but I have.
It has a little tassel attached to it to use as a bookmark. I keep the current day marked.
The paper is slightly yellowed, with a grid of light dots, maybe 8mm apart in both directions. It’d probably be good for playing grid-based paper games, but that’s not what I use it for. At a guess I’d say it was 70~80gsm. Good, strong paper, without being bulky.
For a while I maintained an index on the first page, in true bullet journal fashion, with page references for months, and a yearly overview for each year as it happened, three months to a page. Turns out that wasn’t actually useful to me. Likewise, it was purely a daily todo list and short bullet points on things that happened in a given day, if I felt it was exceptional enough to mark it.
The beginning was November 2016. I wasn’t doing too well then. “Diazepam helped alot.” “Fucking chill.” “chill” “relax about life a little” “Feeling a bit underappreciated” (NB. this was almost certainly the understatement of the year.) The tone is rarely positive, and when it is, it feels fabricated. There’s a lot of self-reassurance that things will be okay, and reminders to try to provide reassurance to my partner that things will be okay. “Panic attack all morning.” “Didn’t get any work done.” Sometimes there’s an upturn. “Feel better as the day has gone on.” Then there’s a downturn. “Last night she was very suicidal.”
If I jump 60 pages ahead, the tone has changed significantly. “Sun feels so good!! aaaaaaaaaaa” “GOD I LOVE BUNNIES” “feeling pretty fine w/ new hair”. The style of the journal has changed, and it is much more a diary. Short dot points of a day’s events give way to entire pages of solid prose, feelings I can now express.
Further months pass and days wax and wane, grow thicker and thinner. Sometimes it’s thin because I’m too busy to write, other times because I’m too depressed to. Sometimes it’s thick because I have too many negative emotions, other times too many positive events to detail.
A lot happens in 158 pages.