keeping diaries

do you keep diaries when you were young(er)?

i did

and being a typical Gemini, i actually have two diaries, one about my real life and the other about an imaginary life i wish i have :) i started keeping diaries when i turned 9, having been inspired by Emily of New Moon and Anne of Green Gables, of course :p i remember my first diary, it was one of those big brown leather diaries from my father's company, he used to only give them to my sisters, but that year he gave me two of them, saying how he's always seeing me scribbling stuff on bits and pieces of paper. he knew even then that i dearly love to write stories and would more likely to waste printer papers, hence the gift :p

what sort of things you write in your diary? i bet its the usual, your hopes and dreams, your favourite star, your favourite movie and things you wish you have, like a pony or a playhouse or be one of the kids in Sesame Street :p

the first thing i always do when i got diaries was to look up my birthday. of course, everybody does that, no matter what your age right? and when you are 9, and you proudly marked your birthday as a very busy day, you schedule is free for the rest of the year but comes Jun 7, yep, you will be busy :p

i wrote quite feverishly in those diaries, writing what really happened in one diary, and creating a totally imaginary world in another, thank god i never got confuse of the two! being the middle child, with two temperemental older sisters and one younger brother who demands all attention, i was pretty much left quite alone, mostly staying in my room reading or writing.

i didnt keep a diary every year but one of thickest diary i have was i was in Form 5, writing about add maths (yucks), crushes, being captain of the house cheering squad, writing and directing my first award winning school play and dikir barat practices, being the features editor of the school magazine, interviewed two good looking astronauts, being featured on TV3 (hehe yess, i did, will tell you in another story) and of course boys and parties, i remember arguing with my parents to let me go to the News Straits Times Writer's Bloc Camp after Form 5, i was one of the 25 that was selected from hundreds all over the country, of course I want to go right? they were not too happy that i secretly applied :p i can see the pattern there when i secretly applied for Chevening and got that too :p

i found one of my diaries last week, when i was cleaning up the junk in the storeroom. amidst the pictures and love letters from THE ex boyfriend, there lay a blue and green spiral notebook with the words Private and Confidential written in bold black lettering on it, subtle i know :p it was the diary i kept when i was 12 years old, and i wrote about falling in love for the first time with that cute boy in my religious class and i wrote about how confident i was that i will be married by the age of 26 and most importantly i wrote that my biggest dream would be working and living independently, either here or in overseas, having my own apartment, i even wrote how i would decorate it and the dinner parties i would host in it, even then, my dreams were pretty big..

i put the diary back into the box, along the pictures and love letters, somethings you just cant throw out, and put the box in my room, instead of back in the storage. i had a dream to achieve :)


Note : i am glad i had kept those diaries and i am glad that we now have a better diary system, i think blogs have got to be one of the best thing about the world wide web, what you write will be around forever and forever and a testimonial that you have once existed and that it had mattered to a lot of people. you had mattered to a lot of people and i think that's all most people really want in this world :)