a diary, habit, routine

The homework that I had to do every single day for six years in elementary school was to write a diary. It was the beginning of a day’s work to write a picture diary in the first grade and a diary without a picture in the second grade, and to write a diary every day and put it on the desk of my homeroom teacher as soon as I went to school.

I had to write a diary every day for my vacation homework, but I tried not to delay it because it would be a hard task just before school started. Even if it was delayed for a day or two, the weather was recorded every day. Come to think of it, teachers probably couldn’t finish reading the diary, but they were worried that they might find out that they falsely recorded the weather in the naive elementary school student’s mind.” (Actually, by the end of the vacation, many of my friends asked me to borrow some diaries, not to copy the diary, but to copy the weather. )

I have never delayed or skipped my diary for six years in elementary school. But from second grade to early fourth grade, I hated writing a diary. When I was a sophomore, I wrote in my diary about my visit to the temple with my mother and grandmother, and my homeroom teacher who was checking my diary suddenly called me and scolded me for hitting my head with the diary. Later it turned out that the teacher was a devout Christian. Is that something to hit a sophomore on the head? These days, it was a time when things like reporting happened casually. The shame I felt about it was truly enormous. And I vowed never to write an honest story in my diary again. Since then, the contents of my diary have become completely mechanical.

After the incident, I gave up writing my diary, but there was nothing special about elementary school students’ work, so the content was similar every day. The diary, which began with the sentence “What did I do today,” led to a few lines of detailed explanations about something, and ended with a sentence containing a dull feeling of “how fun, fun, and sad.” Until I met my fourth-grade homeroom teacher, every day was a series of such diaries.

My fourth grade homeroom teacher was such a nice person, and one day he handed us the checked diary and said this. After a long time, I can’t remember the exact way of speaking, but I still remember the content so clearly.

It was a very small lesson now, but it was a very difficult spell for me at that time. It was too difficult just not to start with ‘today’. Then I remember how to start and how many times I rewrote my diary. I liked the teacher who added a line or two of words to my diary so much that I felt attached to it for the first time, but the level of the diary did not change much from before. However, my teacher’s words still survive in me and even now, when I write my diary, I try to start with “today” without thinking about it, but I rush to choose another word.

I really started writing my diary when I was 29 years old, and there were many complicated and disturbing moments when I finished my 20s and prepared for my 30s. When I first started to write a diary, I only wrote a line or two of similar daily life, but as it continued, I thought I couldn’t do this. So, I started to live my daily life to find the subject of the diary. I began to observe my daily life closely and found meaning in small things.

Then my daily life wasn’t just that kind of day. Every day was a meaningful day, and the messages I realized in it used to be a gentle echo of my life.

It is a diary that I wrote that I still remember how precious my daily life is when nothing happens, taking off the crumbs on my fingernails, regretting all day long ago, I wrote that I realized how precious my daily life is when nothing happens. Even the filth became the subject of the diary and the experience of teaching oneself.

It became a habit to keep a diary, followed by a prenatal diary with a child and a child’s diary after childbirth. It has been four months since I started to write my diary diligently again after regretting that I had been so tired and distracted for about a year while pregnant and giving birth to my second child.

Beginning at the age of 29, diary writing has changed my life a lot. If he had kept a diary even in his turbulent 20s, he would have been less hurt by those moments when he lost and collapsed countless times.

Through writing a diary, I learned how to comfort myself, and to heal myself like that, and to find meaning in everyday life, an open mind to rejoice in small things, and the leisure to look around.

So I keep a diary today.

A habit, diary writing, that makes everyday life special, nothing special.

I believe this habit will surely lead my life in a better direction in the future.