Gen Z is modernising the diary to improve their well-being

From countyenews.com

(ETX Daily Up) – On TikTok, more and more posts show Internet users keeping a diary. Internet users are arming themselves with their best fountain pens and fluorescent lights to show how a notebook can help overcome everyday problems and capture memories. Explanations of a trend that takes us back to the past.

On Tik Tok, the hashtag “journaling ideas” has over 400 million views. The diary, which was once stored safely out of sight, has become the new ritual of Generation Z on TikTok. This trend has a name, “journaling”, understanding the fact of writing down your thoughts and feelings on paper every day, at all times. It has become for many socionauts a new mental refuge. This return to paper is surprising with the advent of digital technology and smartphones. Sleek desk, fountain pen, outline notebook. A whole aesthetic was born on the social network around journaling, revealing to as many people as possible a hitherto intimate ritual.

When scrolling through the application, we see more and more posts showing, most often, young women at their desks writing lines from their diary. Advice is also given to guide the writing. For example, the user orendaduong, which brings together 170,000 subscribers on her account, has launched a month-long challenge during which she answers an existential question every day. For many, the diary is a free therapy where you can give yourself the right to be vulnerable. In the comments of a video Internet users share the positive effects of this ritual: “Journaling and crying got me through my first heartbreak and is currently getting me through my second.”

This return to basics is by no means trivial. As always, Tik Tok takes concepts as old as the world and tries to modernize them. This time, the diary has come back into vogue with the advent of self-care on social networks, where taking care of yourself takes precedence over everything else. The newspaper is sometimes basic in appearance, or otherwise adorned with stickers, photos, and innocuous things like tickets box. There are several ways to keep a diary. It can be a gratitude journal in which you write down all your accomplishments, your inspirations, your favorite foods. But also an expressive diary, where you write down your emotions, your traumas, and your personal problems. Even more unusual is the “dream diary”, which allows you to write down your dreams once you wake up.

In an interview for StylistNicky Clinch, maturation coach and well-being author, believes that journaling is an effective way to help people better understand their emotions: “We have thousands of thoughts running through our minds in 24 hours, and about 80% of them are negative. (…) We can use ‘journaling’ as a way to begin to see and gain a deeper awareness of what is going on in our mind.” According to medical experts from the University of Rochester, journaling can help, among other things, to manage stress, reduce anxiety, and cope with depression. He was also proven that keeping a daily gratitude journal can improve sleep quality and mood, strengthen relationships with others, and reduce symptoms of physical pain.

https://countyenews.com/gen-z-is-modernizing-the-diary-to-improve-their-well-being/ 

Do you maintain a journal or diary?

From rvtravel.com

Do you write down your thoughts, or keep a diary of your activities on a regular basis? That’s what we are curious about today.

Here’s a definition of each of these terms we found doing a Google search. We think it’s pretty good. It says:

“A journal and a diary are similar in kind but differ in degree. Both are used to keep personal records, but diaries tend to deal with the day to day, more data collection really, and journals with bigger picture reflection/aspiration.”

Here’s an example, also found with a Google search:

“Regarding work and career, a diary might be about appointments, meetings and tasks completed. A journal, on the other hand, might be about big picture things, like your career goals, dreams and aspirations.”

“In a journal, you might write as if you were writing to a very dear, best friend, with what was on your mind.”

https://www.rvtravel.com/poll1068b/

 

A woman mailed her diary to a stranger, who added an entry and did the same. People have kept it going for a year.

From washingtonpost.com

Kyra Peralte thought keeping a diary during the pandemic might help her sort out her tangled feelings. Then she decided to drop her journal in the mail and share it with a stranger.

Peralte — a mother of two in Montclair, N.J. — started writing candidly last April about the challenges of juggling work, marriage and motherhood during a global crisis.

Writing was cathartic, but Peralte, 44, wanted to know how other women were doing. Was she alone in her feelings or were other women experiencing the same overwhelming stress? She craved connection.

So she made an unusual offer. She invited other women from near and far to fill the remaining lined pages of her black-and-white marbled composition notebook with their own pandemic tales.

“I wanted an interaction that felt human, and it feels very human to read someone else’s writing,” said Peralte, a children’s game designer.

She dreamed up “The Traveling Diary” — a simple notebook that would traverse the globe via snail mail, collecting handwritten stories and, ultimately, creating a community.

Kyra Peralte had an idea to send a composition notebook with her diary entry to a stranger last April. The woman who got it did the same, and a year later, seven diaries have circulated, and 115 women have been part of the traveling diary. (Courtesy of Kyra Peralte)

A year later, seven marbled notebooks have circulated in various locations — from the United States to Australia, Canada to South Africa — and a growing group of strangers have formed an unexpected friendship as a result. So far, 115 women have signed up to participate.

Peralte found her first contributor on a Zoom conference for entrepreneurs, during which she mentioned her diary idea. A woman from North Carolina immediately reached out and said she would like to write in the book. 

From there, Peralte wrote a Medium article, in an effort to recruit more women to get involved. Word spread, and she created a website so participants could easily add their names to the queue. Each person is allowed to keep the diary for up to three days and fill as many pages as they wish, with whatever writing or artwork they choose. Then, they are responsible for mailing it to the next person, whose address Peralte provides.

Women around the world from various cultures, races and lifestyles eagerly signed up to share their stories. They each began filling the pages with their own handwriting, narrating their pandemic experiences, recounting obstacles they faced and sharing lessons they learned. While some women wrote about grief and heartbreak, others wrote about joy and new love.

“Everyone approaches the blank pages in their own personal way,” Peralte said.

The entries all reflect the moment in time when they were written.

Amy Tingle, 52, sat down with the diary last September, in the wake of civil unrest and ongoing protests, and she decided to focus her entry on America’s racial reckoning.

“I couldn’t escape the sadness,” said Tingle, who lives in Maine. “I remember being really disappointed in humanity.”

Writing in the communal diary, “was definitely a therapeutic thing during that time,” she said. As an artist, she also included a collage of women, symbolizing the sense of friendship she felt with other participants.

While writing her own thoughts was healing, she said, it was equally meaningful to read the words of other women who held the book before her.

“It was so fascinating to know that we’re all in the same moment in time, but having such different experiences,” Tingle said.

Kirsty Nicol, 29, who lives in London, heard about the Traveling Diary through a friend. She received the journal two months ago, after it was shipped from New York City.

“It came to me at a challenging time during lockdown,” she said, adding that on top of struggling with prolonged isolation and pandemic fatigue, she also got tonsillitis. Reading the entries allowed her to escape, transporting her into the lives of others and finding bits of wisdom they left.

One woman from Australia had written: “Working with the setbacks. Not against them. Patience and gratitude. It’s a dance. Life is moving and we can stomp our feet in rejection, or we can gracefully embrace the mess, tidying as we go.”

While some women opted to write about broad issues impacting society, others got more personal.

When Colleen Martin, 44, received the diary on her doorstep in Florham Park, N.J., last November, “I had just recently lost my brother,” she said.

Although she had originally signed up for the Traveling Diary months prior, it ultimately arrived at just the right moment for her, she said.

“By the time I actually got it and wrote in it, it was much more of a therapeutic relief,” she said, explaining that she wrote about her grief.

It helped her look for meaning and “the growth and development that occurs in terrible times.”

Martin shipped off the diary to the next participant, and shortly after, Dior Sarr, 33, received it at her home in Toronto just before the new year.

“I wrote about my ambitions, my goals and how I wanted to step into the new year,” she said. It felt meaningful to “to pass on something so personal. It felt like these were women that I had known even though I didn’t know them at all,” said Sarr, who works in health care.

Recently, though, Sarr did meet some of the women whose stories she read, through a virtual get-together that Peralte organized.

“It has really evolved into a community,” Peralte said. She often hosts Zoom events so the women get the chance to get to know one another more, share stories they might have missed and connect more intimately. Some of the women, she said, have actually become close friends.

Nan Seymour, 54, described meeting fellow Traveling Diary participants as a “miraculous” experience.

Seymour, who lives in Salt Lake City, received the diary last month. She learned about the project on social media and immediately signed up.

“I loved that it was a tangible book, and I loved that it was coming by snail mail, operating at a different speed and frequency than our jacked-up Internet-based life,” she said.

Holding the book in her hands, “I felt like I was reading something sacred,” she said. As she slowly examined the 12 entries that preceded her own, “it evoked a sense of awe.”

“I found all the experiences relatable in their essence, but there were definitely reports from lives very different than my own,” she said.

Seymour wrote a personal essay about her 26-year-old daughter, who is transgender.

“I wanted to represent that part of my life, and I thought it might benefit others,” she said, adding that she knew her words would be well-received.

“We’re all drawn to this project from the same heart-based purpose,” she said. “Once you come through this door, you’re meeting people whose values align.”

Although six notebooks are still traveling the globe, the original diary — which contains Peralte’s very first entry about navigating pandemic life and reconnecting with family — is finally back in her possession, with two more books expected to arrive in May.

“It was beautiful to have it again and to read it,” she said. “I carry these stories with me on a daily basis.”

She feels a strong bond with the people who wrote them, none of whom she would have otherwise known.

Peralte’s spontaneous idea, she said, has had a profound effect on her, and she hopes, the other women who were part of it.

“The Traveling Diary is making sisters out of strangers,” she said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/05/04/traveling-diary-stranger-covid/

Dear Diary: Keeping track - and on top - of modern life

From stuff.co.nz

By Kylie Klein-Nixon

There’s a little ritual I like to perform every January.

I hit my local stationery store and splash out on a pretty paper planner.

In it, I record my good intentions for the upcoming year: I will organise my life and work, I will maximise my usefulness and manage my time more effectively. I will get myself properly sorted.

Then I pop the diary on my nightstand . . . and promptly forget about it.

I know I’m not the only person who does this. Don’t even front, New Zealand.

US author and designer Ryder Carroll knows a bit about this cycle of disorganisation.

As a kid, Carroll struggled in school, finding it all but impossible to concentrate on anything that didn’t interest him. He was eventually diagnosed with ADHD, which, at that time, was not well understood.

"I was forced to figure out ways to become organised and productive to make my way through school, and I did that using the only tool really available to me, which was my good, old-fashioned notebook,” he says, on a call from the US.

RYDER CARROLL

US Author and Bullet Journal creator Ryder Carroll with his "bujo"

 

After prompting from friends and co-workers, he shared the method he created BulletJournal.com, espousing a deceptively simple and versatile system for managing your time, thoughts and productivity effectively, “in order to live intentionally”.

“It didn't arrive fully formed,” he explains. BuJo, as its fans call it, evolved through years of trial and error.

“I designed it to be very flexible, because I needed something to organise the way my mind works.

“When you have ADHD, your mind works in many different ways all at the same time. You think in images, you think in words, you think things simultaneously. I needed a system that could very quickly react to the way that I was thinking.”

A Life Saver?

From such intensely personal beginnings, BuJo has grown into a global movement so popular and effective The New Yorker called it a “cult”, while still asking if it might “save your life”. Carroll’s book about the process, The Bullet Journal Method, is a New York Times bestseller, and there are millions of #Bujo and #bulletjournal posts on Instagram.

“It's not a finished process. A big part of bullet journaling is that it continues to evolve alongside its user.”

That’s why it works as well for a busy mompreneur, as it does for a mechanic; and as well for a teenager heading off to university, as it does a nurse managing a hospital ward. The tools “interact with each other, but also stand alone”, you just use what’s helpful and leave the rest behind.

It’s also the reason you’ll have seen BuJos that look less like diaries than art works: Fans have picked up the ideas Carroll created and run with them.

Some journals look more like an art project than something you’d use to keep you on track

Don’t let all the gorgeous double-page, calligraphy- flower- and washi-tape-covered spreads – that’s Bujo talk for layouts – put you off. While Carroll is delighted folks have turned bullet journaling into a rich creative outlet, one that’s often meditative and part of their thinking process, he stresses that’s not what it was designed for.

"Fast forward a couple of years now, people feel like the declaration is the purpose, and that’s backwards,” he says.

“When people see my tutorial videos, they're often shocked, because my handwriting's not great. It's black-and-white, it's kind of messy. That's where you begin. I encourage everyone to start there."

Carroll’s own Bujo is functional, minimal and personal

 The Analog Revival

All you really need is half-an-hour, a pen and a notebook.

After just a few weeks of using a slightly truncated version of the method, it’s working for me.

I start the day with a list of tasks already created from rapid log – and what I didn’t get to yesterday. I can spread my work out over the week, so I have fewer high pressure days. I hit the ground not just running, but sprinting every single day, and find it easier to switch off at night.

Also, and don’t tell my boss, but for the first time in my working life, I feel genuinely on top of things.

And what’s more, I’m actually using that notebook. Trust me to come late to the analog revival.

The digital revolution may have started more than 20 years ago, but Kiwis have been returning to the pen-and-paper fold for a while now.

The Kiwi Way

Alongside independent journaling systems such as BuJo, more structured, guided planners like the Passion Planner, Daily Greatness, The Makers Journal and Kiwi-designed options such as Kōura, and Littleline, have surged in popularity.

"I did an initial print run of 25 diaries," says Kelly Dare, a mum-of-one and developer of the Kiwi-designed and made Kōura diary, a self-care and mental health tracker with the tag line kia māia, kia atawhai (have courage, be kind).

"I thought I might sell out of those before Christmas. But I've just done the biggest order from my print person, ever.

"I think people are really looking for ways to put 2020 behind them and think, 'how do I actually shape my world, what works for me’, rather than being told what to do."

Dare was looking for a system where she could put her thoughts down on paper and feel like she "was actually achieving something every day".

"That's where Koura came from, needing something to make sure that I was looking after myself.”

 KELLY DARE/KOURA Dare's self-care tracker is simple, clean-lined and functional.

It hinges on a system called Power, that encourages you to track the five things you do each day to promote better wellbeing and self-care.

They include a physical activity; one good thing for yourself, such as getting your hair done or even just getting out of bed; watching yourself take care of yourself, focusing on it; eating something that makes you feel good (be it a piece of cake or a salad); and relaxation and rest.

When friends and whānau would come to her stressed or overwhelmed with life, Dare would share the technique with them. The obvious benefits they gained inspired her to create the journal.

"It's these five things that you do every single day, and they don't have to be big things, they don't have to be training for a half-marathon, they don't have to be like going full keto, or whatever the big dramatic thing is at the moment.

"It's just doing little things every day that add up to a big thing."

The journal can also help you plan your day, make it easier to prioritise doing those five things, and then reinforce how good they made you feel – like a gratitude journal dedicated to yourself.

"I just think there's something really special about writing something down on paper. Because it creates the practice of self awareness, you're really thinking about what you did, sitting there and putting it down.

"I get to the end of the day and I fill it out and I'm like, 'oh, I felt like I had a terrible day, but actually, I had a really good coffee with someone at work'. So in connecting pen to paper and thinking through it, it creates that feedback loop."

Practical Tool

Even when we use our planners for more practical purposes, they have a de-stressing and uplifting effect.

Busy mum-of-two and product manager Allie Sinclair is a paper calendar advocate. Her planner hangs on her kitchen fridge, at the heart of the family home, where she and her husband can see it every day.

"I put everything on it. I've literally got it beside me now, because I was wondering when we're having time off over Christmas . . . It just means I know exactly where I need to be at what time."

She also uses a meal planner, to organise food and snacks for the girls well in advance, so she no longer has to spend half the evening figuring out what’s for dinner.

Using the planners, designed by her friend graphic designer Kelly McCabe “takes the stress out of the whole week”. She just puts half-an-hour aside on a Sunday morning to plan her week and the family’s meals and, for the rest of the week, she doesn’t “need to worry about any of that”.

“I can move stuff around – I do that, depending on how the day's gone – but at least I know that everything's ready to go. It’s just so much easier, especially when you're working.

"I've always quite liked the tactile quality of having a calendar. I work in the digital space, so I do understand it and there are a lot of positives to it. But using the calendar, seeing it on the wall, at a glance, and actually writing things down, I love it.”

McCabe, also a busy mum-of-two, had new mothers in mind when she started designing her Littleline collection of planning pads, particularly the entrepreneurial kind, who are trying to balance a small business with a hectic family life.

"I know a lot of mums with small businesses are just trying to have that kind of creative output, to do something for themselves that they enjoy.

"Being able to set aside time to do that, it's so important. It’s so important that we have time to ourselves. For me, that's definitely designing and creating stationery. That's my self-care, actually."

One unique tool in her self-care stationery kit is the Pre-Pillow Planner, a pre-bed detox for your brain she designed because it was something she was already doing to help her wind down.

"When you've got a lot going on, lots of to-dos and whatnot, it encourages you to plan out your next day before you go to bed, so you can get a peaceful night's sleep.

“I always plan out my next day before bed otherwise it'll just be chaos in the morning."

Hand Made For You

Over and over again, studies find that people who take notes by hand are able to reflect on their intentions more clearly, and retain information for longer, says Carroll.

"I think there's a couple of reasons for that. Studies suggest that using your hand to write connects your mind and your body in a way that typing does not. People who are learning new languages learn much faster by writing them by hand, because character recognition is sped up.

"Of course, I didn't know any of this stuff when I was developing bullet journal, I just knew that I remembered things better when I wrote it by hand.”

PROPHSEE JOURNALS/UNSPLASH

Writing by hand is more meditative, it helps us to remember and reflect

Handwriting slows us down, creating mental and emotional breathing space that tapping away on a keyboard or phone never does. It’s meditative.

"I think in this day and age, we often mistake convenience for efficiency.

"Let me be clear, it's much slower to write by hand than it is to type. But I see that as a feature, and not a bug. Because you use more effort, you'll be more deliberate with the words that you choose.”

HOW TO CREATE A BULLET JOURNAL

Grab a pen, ruler and notebook.

Make the first two pages an index and number the rest (you can do this as you go).

The next four are a pair of “future logs”, two two-page spreads divided into six sections each, one for each month. Add the page numbers for these to the index.

The next two pages are your first monthly log. On the right page, mark the dates down the side, with their corresponding week days next to them. On the facing page, log all the tasks you have to get done this month.

The next two pages are your daily log. Here you capture all your events, notes, appointments, ideas and thoughts each day. Order doesn’t matter. You’ll know what’s what by the bullet points in front of them: Dots for tasks, a dash for notes, a circle for events. Add the pages to the index.

A star next to the bullet makes it a priority, or important. An exclamation mark means “inspiration”.

As each task is achieved, put a cross through the bullet. If you move a task to a later date, turn the dot into an arrow to show it’s been “migrated”.

At the end of each day, week and month, review the tasks and see if any are still worthwhile pursuing and migrate them to an appropriate date.

Add or change bullets, “spreads” or page styles to suit your needs and creativity.

This is just a brief overview of the technique. For more in depth explanation, and some excellent videos, check out Ryder Carroll’s website bulletjournal.com, and grab a copy of his book, The Bullet Journal Method.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/how-to/123350174/dear-diary-keeping-track--and-on-top--of-modern-life 

Note to self: a pandemic is a great time to keep a diary, plus 4 tips for success

From theconversation.com

A search for “Coronavirus Diary” on Google yields 910,000 results. News outlets like the Guardian, The Atlantic and The New York Times have chronicled an increase in personal record-keeping.
Whether for future historians, self-care or to relieve feelings of isolation, we are in the middle of a diarological moment.

And today’s diaries aren’t just handwritten reflections in bound notebooks. They might be social media posts, video entries or visual collages – so long as they are regularly updated over an extended period and personal in nature, they fit the bill. The secret is in the repetition, and the pledge that drives it.

On the look out

The word diary entered the English language in the late 16th century, via the Latin word, diarium, which comes from dies, meaning day. The diary asks us to attend to this day.

Diary-keeping sharpens observational skills, so it is no wonder then that cultural institutions have begun projects to crowd-source details of what otherwise might be quite banal aspects of our lives.
The State Library of Victoria has a Facebook group, Memory Bank, where posts of shopping lists and sourdough recipes have given way to more melancholy images of closed shops and empty streets in the CBD – a collective chronicle both hyperlocal and universal.

The State Library of New South Wales subtitles its Diary Files an “online community diary”, and currently contains nearly a thousand entries, searchable by keywords. School, time, home and COVID are among the most commonly written words, and the greatest number of contributions come from Sydneysiders between 10 and 15 years of age.

Video “lockdown” diaries can also be viewed online, via BBC Reel, or listened to through Corona Diaries, the interactive open source project which collects audio stories from around the world.
Social researchers have identified the diary as a tool to capture the impact of the pandemic on daily life. UK sociologist Michael Ward began his research through CoronaDiaries, where 164 participants ranging in age from 11 to 87 submit entries in a variety of forms. Ward suggests:

These entries are able to highlight the multiple different lives behind the dreaded numbers we hear announced each day.

Famous diary keepers

Most of us can name some famous literary diarists of history – Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Adrian Mole. When we stray far beyond this list, it is often the times, rather than the writer, that make the diary notable.

There is Lena Mukhina’s perspective on the Siege of Leningrad, 13-year-old Anne Frank’s account of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and the poignant scratchings of Sir Robert Scott’s on the day he perished: “For god’s sake, look after our people”.

Nelson Mandela’s desk-calendar notes, kept in prison, speak to extraordinary experiences under extreme conditions.

Diaries from the 1918 influenza pandemic came into their own as more than ephemera for both historians and scientists in 2020.

For a book length account, we can look to Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, about life in London in 1665 – bearing in mind the author was only five years old at the height of the epidemic, so it is likely a factual-meets-fictional rendering.

Diary-writing serves broader society, and can help individuals make sense of difficult times.
Interviewed for this story, psychologist Robyn Moffitt told us:

From a psychological perspective, keeping a diary is a really useful (and evidence-based) way to engage in healthy self-monitoring of thoughts, feelings, and behaviour … writing things down as they happen can provide some objective evidence and perspective on the frequency and severity of different events, and we can use this to correct distorted thinking.
The process of writing itself can also be quite therapeutic. It can allow us to process and reconstruct past events, problem-solve, and create new meanings, and in some ways this makes it similar to psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is often referred to as the “talking cure”, and writing can provide similar therapeutic benefits (the “writing cure” perhaps)?

What makes it a diary?

The turn of the 21st century saw a resurgence of the diary in public reading events such as Mortified, Salon of Shame and our own experiments with The Symphony of Awkward.

It might be argued that social media has since overtaken the diary as a means to chronicle one’s life. Indeed, there is crossover in the ways lives are shared and curated across different media, from the handwritten diary to blogs.

The ritualistic structure offered by the personal diary can be repurposed in digital spaces. The notion of publicly committing to post something – an image, a video, a song – every day offers another way of marking out time when every day is Blursday the fortyteenth of Aprilay.

We have experimented with each recording a sound a day, collected from the few spaces we were still able to inhabit.

A diaristic practice, whether written or not, supports us to stay in the moment, as psychotherapists and life coaches exhort us to do.

And it’s never too late to start diarising. Here are some tips:

1. Decide on your platform

Digital or analogue? Decide on your medium. The written or spoken word? A photo? A sound? A song? Choose something that pleases you (a special pen, a fancy notebook) to heighten the experience.

2. Make a vow

Make an entry every day, or on a set number of days for four weeks. 28 days is said to be a good target if aiming to break or start a habit – though it may take longer.

3. Make time

Set aside time at the same hour each day to capture your experience.

4. Rinse and repeat

Carpe diem. Seize the day!

https://theconversation.com/note-to-self-a-pandemic-is-a-great-time-to-keep-a-diary-plus-4-tips-for-success-144063

There’s Never Been A Better Moment To Start A Diary

From vogue.co.uk
By Hayley Maitland

“The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing a future can be, I think,” wrote Virginia Woolf upon beginning her first long-term diary, in 1915. Within a few years, she would become a Vogue contributor, penning reviews and essays for the magazine’s pages. At the height of the First World War, however, she was concerned with empty shelves in her local Richmond grocer, Zeppelin raids and the constant stream of “very bad news in the newspapers”.

Sitting down each evening before dinner to commune with her journal proved a tonic for Woolf – a way of processing history as she lived through it. A century later, the same impulse is being shared by a new generation of diarists, keen to take up the pen as reality shifts around them. Julia Jeuvell, founder of cult London stationer Choosing Keeping, sees “analogue” diary-keeping as a vital antidote to stress. “Being in front of a screen and passively consuming information can be draining – whereas writing or sketching on paper is the opposite. It’s an opportunity to be creative and recharge,” she explains, noting, too, the surge in demand for her handmade notebooks, which are bound in vintage Italian and Japanese papers.

Take Manhattan-based artist Pamela Sztybel, who, after decades of painting landscapes, has pivoted to home-made visual diary-making under quarantine, establishing a devoted Instagram following thanks to her headline-inspired illustrations of everything from a Bronx Zoo tiger’s Covid-19 diagnosis to the Queen’s national address at Windsor Castle. “I started the project in order to have some sort of account of this historical transformation in real time,” Sztybel explains of her creations. “I hope that my little news service might be a useful record in the future – but it’s also a means of connecting with others during this strange period.”

Professionals are by no means alone. “The notion of art as therapy is stronger than ever – both to record what’s going on around us and, conversely, to help us escape from it for a little while,” says Georgia Spray, the founder of online gallery Partnership Editions, which represents some of London’s brightest young talent. Just after lockdown began, she worked with key artists to record popular tutorials devoted to capturing the world from self-isolation. Included in their number? Printmaker Rose Electra Harris’s guide to joyful, Matisse-inflected renderings of one’s home, and botanical artist Julianna Byrne’s gratitude-inspiring lessons on sketching foraged plants and wild flowers.

Then, of course, there are the everyday writers, documenting the minutiae of daily life, as events seem to both crunch and widen. “A diary is really the purest form of expression – a way of quietly finding meaning in our experiences and processing trauma,” says Tamsin Calidas, the author of this summer’s buzziest memoir, I Am an Island, about her life on a remote croft in the Outer Hebrides. “I carry a pencil and jotter with me wherever I go to record my impressions of the world around me. Writing down our thoughts and emotions is a way of shining some light into the darkness around us – and, ultimately, finding our way through it.”

https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/gallery/how-to-start-a-diary