Diary keeping is enjoying a 2020 resurgence

From newsofthearea.com.au

WRITING and keeping a diary is making a comeback during the pandemic.

Dr Peta Murray, a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University, said diary-keeping is having a resurgence, as people find it helps them in troubled times and it could also help others.

“Diary-keeping was like turning to a trusted friend and pouring your heart out, although in a much more intimate way – there was only you, the pen and the paper.
“But now we’re realising it can be done more casually than that, simply as a way to connect with others by connecting with ourselves.”

For some, a daily post on social media is a modern diary.

Reflective writing also has therapeutic benefits, according to Dr Robyn Moffitt, a Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University.
Moffitt’s research has found reflective writing can help women manage their body dissatisfaction.

After participants wrote a brief diary entry encouraging compassion towards themselves, they were found to be more appreciative of their bodies and motivated to improve themselves further.

Moffitt said from a psychological perspective, there’s evidence keeping a diary is a useful way to engage in healthy self-monitoring of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
“Reflecting on past events in our mind can often lead to self-critical and unhelpful thinking, or even rumination, which can exacerbate distress.”
“But keeping a diary and writing things down as they happen can provide perspective on the frequency and severity of different events.
“Think of it like discovering an old memory, forgotten clues from your past self that could help you through current challenges,” she said.

             Port Stephens Citizen of the Year, Alicia Cameron often ponders before journaling

Local coach Alicia Cameron told News Of The Area, “The best thing is it is an exchange of energy and takes things out of your head and puts it onto paper.
“You can ponder or write a gratitude journal.
“Most people know what they don’t want, but only a few take time to find what they do: journaling takes the time to think about what you do want to bring clarity and changes your brain waves, taking you into an inspirational and aspirational mind.
“Putting your goals on paper makes you five times more likely to achieve them – it creates accountability,” she said.

Fiona Brown of Youtopia said, “Journaling is such a valuable tool and one that I use regularly with my clients.
“It is a wonderful tool for making clear what is otherwise a random mess of thoughts swimming around in your head.
“Journaling can only be done in the present moment which allows you to tap into what is real for you right now, bringing a much clearer perspective rather than trying to recall the past which naturally changes as over time through the filters of our mind.
“It is the perfect tool for reducing overwhelm and helping create a positive future,” she said.

So if you are looking to de-stress, create clarity or feel better about your situation perhaps trying using a diary or journal is a step in the right direction for you.

https://www.newsofthearea.com.au/diary-keeping-enjoying-a-2020-resurgence-58394

Dear diary! Covid-19 pandemic leads to resurgence in diary-keeping

From startsat60.com

Starts at 60 bloggers Sue Leighton and Susan Gabriel-Clarke might live on different continents but that doesn’t stop them from staying up to date with one another through their routine daily emails. The pair discusses everything from what they’ve done during the day to their ailments and even their past loves – just like a modern day dairy.

Diary-keeping – whether it’s to record a special moment in your life, keep track of where you are or simply to get your thoughts down on paper – is one of the best habits to pick up, and these days you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t kept a diary at one point in their lives.

And as the lucky generation to properly see technology make its way into the world, many Baby Boomers have since moved their writing style from old-fashioned handwriting to suit the age of the computer. New diary entries now come in the form of emails between friends, blog posts and social media updates.

For Sue and Susan, their daily emails recount every moment of their lives and making the move online has only made their diary-keeping habits more prolific than ever before. Being able to share their inner thoughts with one another despite one living in Queensland and the other in France has been incredibly reassuring, particularly at this point in time.

                                        Diary-keeping is back and better than ever. Source: Getty

“In truth, there isn’t anything we don’t discuss with each other,” Sue said. “It’s just like writing a daily diary. Particularly, throughout this pandemic, doing so is an incredible source of comfort and connection for both of us.”

Experts from RMIT University are now saying that the age-old hobby is experiencing a resurgence during the pandemic as people are quickly finding it helpful to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard during these troubling times. Dr Peta Murray from RMIT said that while keeping a regular record is helpful on an individual level, it can also be a great help to others.

“We keep hearing these are unprecedented times but it’s largely because none of us on this earth today have a true understanding of what it’s like to live through a pandemic,” she said. “And why would we? We have already seen how vastly different the experience is depending on where one lives and their personal circumstances.”

Murray said that sharing diary entries helps to paint a picture in history of how the world is currently coping in a crisis. Gone are the days of hiding your diary under your bed as modern day diaries are much more open – especially through things like social media where the world now has much easier access to the experiences of others.

Starts at 60 blogger Lyn Fletcher reflected this fairly well in her routine diary-keeping in which she said started at beginning of the pandemic as a form of self-governed contact tracing.

“Before the Covid App was available, I thought it would be a good idea to record each day – what we did, where we went (if we went out), who we saw/met, and how our lives were changing (e.g. new things we were cooking/doing). Fortunately, we haven’t had to refer to it for contact tracing, but it’s been an interesting journey so far.”

But diary-keeping doesn’t have to just be about the woes of the pandemic, as is true for fellow blogger Colin Blane who says he’s been keeping a diary everyday for almost 50 years, recording everything from phone calls to doctors appointments to where he wines and dines.

“My records have been invaluable on many occasions to prove important details about who I spoke to following disputes with Telstra, insurance companies and other organisations (I always keep a record of date, time, and who I spoke to),” he said. “Recording daily activities for me is therapeutic and fulfilling. Just as I start my day with a short prayer of thanks, I sign off with a sense of satisfaction.

On a more personal note, my wife suffers from stroke induced aphasia, so the memories I jot down each day are consistently resurrected to paint word pictures for her to recollect.”

https://startsat60.com/media/lifestyle/entertainment/dear-diary-covid-19-pandemic-leads-to-resurgence-in-diary-keeping

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

"It was fun going back and seeing how far I've come": Louis Theroux looks back in new series

From dorsetecho.co.uk

Louis Theroux is back on screen with a look back at his body of work spanning 25 years

Louis Theroux is taking a trip down career memory lane. Or as he likens it, he says, in his head to, "climbing a mountain and then you take a pause after you've had a decent interval of walking and then you sit on a bench and you're like 'Wow, we're a long way up'".

And he is not wrong.

The TV star's career over more than two decades is a colourful and impactful one.
His latest project, a BBC Two series titled Louis Theroux: Life On The Edge, shines a spotlight on it with a look back on 25 years in the industry.

Four hour-long episodes, each with a different theme, Beyond Belief, Family Ties, Law And Disorder and The Dark Side Of Pleasure, will see him revisit some of his most memorable stories.
Theroux, 50, also unearthed unseen footage from older series such as Weird Weekends, which ran from 1998 to 2000.
"It was really fun going back and opening up the treasure chests of old programmes and seeing how far I've come in a way," he says during a Zoom video interview.

"I think in general what I'm struck by is, how many, because I still feel like a novice in some respect, I still feel like I'm learning how to do this, I still have a lot of professional anxieties whenever I'm starting a new project or just continuing an old project, and so to see how many programmes I've made and how many of them still hold up is really pleasing".
He has tackled topics including Jimmy Savile, US neo-Nazis, Michael Jackson and Scientology in his series and TV specials over the years.
But still, looking back, there were small elements of surprise.

"I didn't expect, but in the first three episodes, is how much they are portraits of America, and all the stories being about America, and the themes", he says, listing them, adding: "All sort of say something, you know, I've always made a lot of programmes in America, but I've never made it explicit what they say about America and here I feel like we're able to do that. It's made me feel like I'm maybe a more serious documentary-maker, which is a good feeling, something I'm not used to".

Last year, he published his autobiography titled Gotta Get Theroux This, which charted his career from fledgling journalist in the early 1990s to BBC regular.
Off screen he hosts a podcast called Grounded With Louis Theroux, which according to BBC Sounds, has been their biggest hit on the service during lockdown.
Featuring interviews with stars including Helena Bonham Carter, Sir Lenny Henry, Boy George, KSI and Miriam Margolyes, Theroux says working on it has been "one of the pleasures" of lockdown.

"Being able to have long form chats with people like Boy George and Lenny Henry via Zoom, and these are people who back in the day I tried to get for When Louis Met, a celebrity series, and who probably very sensibly turned me down and now I'm at place where I feel I can tell those stories of interesting people in the public eye.

"That's another area of enquiry I'd like to go further down, he says, "just the idea of long form chats in which you are getting to the truth with people in a way that's comfortable for them and just connecting with people in different spheres of life in a way that feels unforced and unformatted and free form".

The podcast is part of our conversation in response to asking him what story he still wants to tell.

He explains: "What I have never done is a story about radical Islam and the issue of Islamic extremism. I've tried a couple of times and not got that far down the road. I thought for a while there may be a way of telling the story from the perspective of Isis returnees and I even proposed that about a year ago at the BBC and for one reason or another it got pushed back. I would still like to tell that story.

"You know the Shamima Begum type of story, the world of people who were caught up in Islamic fundamentalism... and how we deal with that now and the world of that ideology. I think all of that is massively interesting and obviously socially important, and really upsetting as well".

Begum is one of three east London schoolgirls who fled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State in 2015, and is fighting a legal battle against the UK after she was stripped of her British citizenship.

And what about lockdown and the last few months of life ever-changed for people across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, is that a story he thinks he will document one day?
"The short answer is I think I might do, but it would be probably in print. I've been keeping a diary, I've had so little time in the last few weeks, I've started to think I'm not keeping enough of a diary," he explains.
There may be, he muses, a "glut of books" written in the next year or year thereafter about this all.

"If I did anything on lockdown I think the only way for me of telling the story would be through the medium of a book or print in which I would excavate the weird tensions... you know in lockdown I was just here with my family, working, but just trying to get through the day, without one of us losing their minds due to this feeling of there not being enough hours in the day, kids being home-schooled or not home-schooled, would be more accurate.

"We have three boys and my wife (Nancy) and I both work, and had professional commitments and you know we're trying to get meals, get everyone fed, keep the house in some semblance of order, get clothes cleaned, do two jobs that are very demanding and then make sure the kids aren't on screens the whole day, it was extremely stressful.

"I think a lot of people had different lockdowns, that was our lockdown, and so, the nature of the arguments we had was kind of interesting, so I started keeping a journal which I talked about (earlier)."

Louis Theroux: Life On The Edge airs on BBC Two on September 6 at 9pm

https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/18684159.fun-going-back-seeing-far-come-louise-theroux-looks-back-new-series/

VJ Day: How a Belfast doctor used Irish to keep WW2 secrets

From bbc.co.uk

He became known as the Belfast Doctor and his medical expertise, leadership and guile helped protect the lives of hundreds of Allied prisoners of war in Japanese prison camps.

Frank Murray was born above the family spirit-grocers shop on north Belfast's Oldpark Road, growing up in a nationalist area of the city in a family with a strong Catholic faith.
Like many of his contemporaries, as a schoolboy he spent the summer in the Gaeltacht in Donegal learning the Irish language, something he would later use to his advantage thousands of miles away in the Far East during a world war.

His son Carl recounts how his father and mother first met among the peaceful and picturesque rolling hills of County Donegal before the outbreak of World War Two.
"My father met my mother Eileen O'Kane in the Gaeltacht area in Ranafast when they were both school children in 1929," he said.

"She was from the Springfield Road and he was from the Oldpark Road in Belfast.
"He asked her to dance at a céilí and fell in love with her.
"They kept up contact thereafter and both went to Queen's University but in 1937 she broke things off and they had no further contact until he found himself in Rawalpindi in what was India at the time, where he was serving as an Army medical officer.
"He sent her a Christmas card with a picture of the officers' mess on it."

  Dr Frank Murray was an Allied prisoner of war in a Japanese prison camp during World War Two

'Secret diaries'

The two began corresponding again and this continued when he was sent to the British garrison at Singapore.
All of her letters were lost when Dr Murray burnt them just before the Japanese invaded and took him prisoner.

However, the family have all the correspondence he subsequently wrote to his sweetheart while he was in captivity and it is these "secret diaries" that make such a fascinating story.
Carl explains that his father kept writing to her in the form of a diary but in order that he didn't incur the wrath of the Japanese guards he did so in Irish, safe in knowledge that the chances of any of them being able to translate were slim in the extreme.

       Letters Dr Frank Murray sent were sometimes in Irish, and sometimes used Irish characters

"Sometimes he would write in English but disguising it using old Gaelic script.
"I remember when I did Irish at school there were text books that had the old script in it which meant there was that extra level that you had to translate from the script and then translate the Irish.
"And he would write about how the war was going but by doing so in Irish he knew that even if the Japanese found it, there was very little chance of them being able to translate that he was recounting events that were happening during the war."

'He never forgave'

Keeping diaries of this kind was strictly forbidden particularly as the enemy soldiers were wary of prisoners recording incidents of brutality or war crimes against them.
Prisoners caught in breach of the regulations were liable to severe punishment in many instances.

Carl says after the war his father would not have anything Japanese in the house.
"I know it's fashionable to talk about reconciliation and forgiveness but I don't really think he ever forgave the Japanese, not for what happened to him but for the way the prisoners were treated.
"However, he distinguished between the Japanese military and the Japanese people.
"You have to respect that having been through what he went through. My father couldn't forgive and I think that's important."

The Murray family has collated as much information as they can about their father's time as a PoW.

'He wanted to do his bit'

He was the medical officer in a number of camps eventually becoming the most senior officer commanding in one prison.
His ability to argue or negotiate with his captors about who was fit and who wasn't fit to join the work details meant the difference between life and death for many Allied captives.
His bravery and service during this time was later recognised with an award from the US military and an MBE.

So how did a Catholic nationalist from north Belfast end up a major in the British Army?
"As children we always wanted to know why he joined up," recalls Carl Murray.
"My father felt that the Nazis could easily have invaded Ireland at that time and later we discovered there was a plan to do that.
"He felt that as a northern Irish Catholic he wanted to do his bit in the war effort. I think he wanted to go to France but he ended up in India, the Malay peninsula and eventually Japan.
"It wasn't what he expected but he did his duty."
 
Astonishingly, the batch of almost translucent papers with tiny spidery writing that make up the doctor's daily diaries - which he kept right under the noses of his Japanese guards - was eventually delivered to Eileen at the end of the war.
When he was repatriated, the couple were married.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-53757121

Healthy habits to help you cope with health anxiety

From europeansting.com
By Ms. Ruth Yan

Since the news of the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early January, newly arisen stressors have created a spike in fear and health related anxiety among the population. In light of the current situation, small-scale anxiety is actually instinctive as this is how our body tries to keep us safe from danger, however if you find yourself dealing with…

1. changes in sleep or eating patterns
2. difficulty sleeping or concentrating
3. changes in behaviour
4. excessive measures to stay clean and healthy
5. increase intake of alcohol, tobacco or food

…due to fears of getting infected or uncertainties of the future, then you might slowly be developing a problem. Just like exercising, eating healthy and getting a balanced amount of sleep are routines that keep us physically fit, it is important to introduce healthy habits to keep our mental health intact in demanding times like these as stress causes our immune system to be more vulnerable.

                                                      (Aarón Blanco Tejedor, Unsplash)

After strenuous research, here are a few recurring tips from different psychologists, as well as therapists that could help anyone going through a difficult time right now.

1. Have an intentional morning routine

Try setting up a sleeping routine and adding meditation exercises into your mornings like noticing 3 things you hear, see or feel this can help keep your feelings in check & connect with the environment.

2. Journaling

Keeping a diary helps you understand your feelings more and provides you with a space to let your thoughts and worries flow out naturally.

3. Avoid information overload

Getting constant notifications throughout the day can leave you feeling stressed. Restrict yourself to checking your newsfeed once a day and stick to reliable sources such as WHO or CDC as the media tends to make click-bait titles or entirely false news to get you to visit their sites, however all this does is induce panic.

4. Breathing Exercises

If you ever find yourself feeling overwhelmed take a moment to do a simple breathing exercise like for example, “box breathing”, this leaves you feeling more calm and collected after you are done.

5. Stay connected

Humans are social beings, we thrive on interactions with other people, therefore using social media to your advantage is key at times like these. Call up your friends,  bond with loved ones or even talk to a co-worker, it will help release those feel good hormones.

6. Establish your control

Instead of focusing on things you can’t control, shift your vision to things you can do as an individual and are in your control.

7. Exercise

Studies show regular exercise can have a significant effect on depression, anxiety, ADHD. It also relieves tension and stress, boosts physical and mental energy and enhances well-being through endorphins.

8. Embrace your worries

Lastly, don’t try to bottle up your worries, push it down or act like it doesn’t exist. It’s normal to be tense in the current situation. Embrace your feelings and talking it out would hopefully help you get through this soon.

https://europeansting.com/2020/08/07/healthy-habits-to-help-you-cope-with-health-anxiety/

Remembering and analysing your dreams: 5 tips for starting a dream diary

From dailycal.org
By Elysa Dombro

More often than not these days, I find myself waking up in the morning to a quickly fading memory of a super strange dream. I don’t know if it’s because of stress over the global pandemic we’re in the middle of, or if there’s just too much light in my room when I’m sleeping. There’s a lot we don’t know about dreams, such as what they mean or why we have them. But what we can do is track them and analyse them. Not only is this practice fun, but it can also help you realize patterns and different moods you may be having. Here are five tips to help you start a dream diary.

                                                     Micaela Lewis/Creative Commons

Do it right when you wake up
If you don’t do it right away, you’re going to forget. Even if it’s the most vivid dream you’ve had in a year, sometimes it just slips away. The remedy for this is to write your dreams as soon as you wake up, though this requires a bit of commitment on your part. If you set an alarm to wake up every morning, you can label the alarm to remind yourself to journal your dreams. You can also agree to keep dream journals with your roommate and hold each other accountable. The more you actually write down your dreams on time, the better results you’ll get, and hopefully the more likely you’ll be to keep it going in the future.

Mood tracking
If you’ve been feeling pretty down during quarantine, you’re definitely not alone. The gloom you’re feeling might be manifesting in your dreams, and what better way to try to track it than to record the strange dreams you’ve had. If you notice you keep having dreams that make you anxious, record them! See if there are any patterns in your dreams, or in days when you have stressful dreams. It might help you evaluate parts of your life that are stressing you out when you’re awake, so you can better address them.

Use a paper journal
Though this is slightly less convenient than just typing dreams into the notes app on your phone, writing in a physical journal can be a great way to describe your dreams more holistically. You can jot down a few words without the brightness from your phone screen jogging you awake, or you can draw a full-blown picture of what was going on. Sometimes, a dream might be easier to capture with a mix of words and images! And there’s a bonus pro to this tip: Keeping a paper journal next to your bed is a great way to remind yourself to actually use your journal.

Analyse at the end of the week
The science is iffy on what certain things in dreams mean, but it can be a lot of fun to take time to analyse your dreams. It’s as easy as Googling “purple dinosaur in dream” and seeing what pops up! Sure, it might be all garbage, but maybe you’ll have a realization about something that is bothering you in real life and has translated to your dreams. Even if you don’t feel like taking the Google route, you can take time at the end of your week to see if you draw any connections between things that happened to you that week and dreams you had. This can be a great way to figure out if you need a change in your life or if something’s been bothering you.

OK, you don’t have to trust everything in your dreams. Maybe they don’t mean anything at all, and tracking them is more misleading than enlightening. At the very least, tracking what you think about at night is a pretty cool practice and a good way to practice mindfulness right when you wake up. And having a record that you can look back on and laugh at is a ton of fun. Happy dreaming!

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/08/03/remembering-and-analyzing-your-dreams-5-tips-for-starting-a-dream-diary/