DIARY OF A DEMENTED HOME WORKER: Keeping things real this January

From southernstar.ie

By Emma Connolly

It’s week 97 and with Blue Monday looming large in the calendar, here are some of my typically down to earth suggestions on how to get, and keep, a good grip on yourself

• NEXT Monday has been declared as Blue Monday – officially the bluest day of the year. Era, it’s a load of old twoddle really but sure it’s handy enough to be able to blame your foul mood on something. And there’s still two more Mondays in the month to get through after that – five in total. Mother of God! Whose idea was that? Anyway in a bid to make Mondays less mournful, and to cheer up all the other days in between this month, I’ve compiled a few tips to lift the mood. I’ve taken it for granted that we’re all up to speed on the tried and tested (and soul-crushingly boring) things like drinking more water, getting fresh air, taking deep breaths and going for walks so my suggestions are a bit more well, basic for you to try, at your own risk of course ….

• Let’s start with this one – take to the bed for a day. Yes, one whole day.  If you’re not already self-isolating and possibly doing this anyway, take on the persona of a Victorian woman who needs lots of bed rest, can’t tolerate day light, and who won’t be receiving any visitors for 24 hours. Key to this being a success is to stock up on lots of treats in advance to binge on (multiple bags of toxic crisps like Monster Munch, a 2L bottle of Sprite, a whole Netflix season, face masks and those booties that promise to make your feet look less like hooves, that don’t really work, but still feel really nice). By bedtime you’ll probably feel a bit delirious (and properly sick from all the crisps), but at least you’ll be grateful to rejoin civilisation (and won’t want to see a crisp until March). For the rest of the month do the exact opposite and try to get up half an hour before the rest of the house. The early bird gets a head start on the day and all the rest (or at least gets to scroll Insta and have the first coffee in peace).

• Next, stay in touch with reality and finally accept that the chances of you winning the Lotto and starting a new life in St Barts are slim (slimmer than you were when you got married). You’ve a far better chance of winning your local GAA lotto so support that instead and at least you’ll feel like you’re doing something good for your community.

It’s normal to feel a bit down in the dumps at this time of the year but take some of my advice and January will be hoot. A bit of a hoot, anyway. At least some of the time.

• Now that we’ve that sorted, and sort of on a similar theme, stop fantasising about jacking in your 9/5 job and becoming a travel blogger (vlogger?). I know you read that article about that person who handed in their notice and is living the dream making millions doing exactly this (I read it too), but I definitely wouldn’t chance it until you’ve got the mortgage paid. And put the kids through college (where they’ll probably taunt you by studying vlogging). Book a holiday instead and get a grip on yourself.

• Without getting too abstract, realise you can’t control people, but you can control your reactions to them. The simple fact is that there are always going to be very annoying people in this world who will drive you to distraction. And somehow they seem even more irritating than usual in January, probably because you’ve stopped day drinking (if you haven’t yet, it’s time). Make a conscious choice not to blow up/freak out every time you encounter such a person/situation and you’ll start to feel a whole lot better. Repeat after me: ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter.’

• Oh yes, here’s a good one. Do something new. Mix things up. Experts say the novelty of doing something new has far-reaching benefits for your mental health and it’s true. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme like sky diving either, or Zumba dancing (shudder). It could be zip-lining though. Why should kids get all the fun? Or it might be something simpler like turning right, when you always turn left at a certain junction to see where the road less travelled takes; choosing a different beach or wood for your walk; eating dinner at the table instead of the kitchen island or changing your handbag for one you haven’t used in ages. Go on you mad thing!

• I tend to roll my eyes a bit when I hear people talking about self-care. Lighting a candle and having a bath? I’m going to need more than that, sorry. But how about trying to be a little more selfish instead? Yes please.  Start suiting yourself a bit more and see how good it feels. Obviously there’s a few non-negotiables like going to work (stop day dreaming about being a vlogger!), making the dinner and doing the school runs but for example if you really don’t feel like meeting someone – just say no! Hmmm, right now I can’t think of anything else you could legitimately say no to, as an adult, without being irresponsible or just a bit weird but there’s bound to be others if you think hard enough.

• Of course a really obvious one that most of us don’t do enough of, is to laugh. Not just a chuckle, or a polite giggle, but proper, uncontrollable skitting. The kind you used to do regularly in school, usually during a school mass. Something really completely random set me off the other night, I can’t remember what it was (well I can, but for legal reasons I better not share!), but I laughed for around three minutes solid and I felt lighter (emotionally, not physically unfortunately), even if my husband looked really alarmed. Find something to set you off. Dancing with the Stars maybe? Or YouTube clips of people falling over. They’re always gas. And sure if all that fails, there’s a bit of a stretch coming already (another walk anyone?) so the brighter days are coming, and in the meantime why not give Wordle a whirl? Look it up. You’re welcome.

https://www.southernstar.ie/life/diary-of-a-demented-home-worker-keeping-things-real-this-january-4236483

When catharsis and expression collide

From palatinate.org.uk

By Josie Lockwood

When I was little, I was a serial journal keeper. I would obsessively jot down each detail of my life: what the weather was like, who I’d played with at break time, which flavour of yoghurt had been in my packed lunch. I had one of those Girl Tech password journals, the garish pink and purple ones that you unlock with your voice. I wrote in it religiously, using an invisible ink marker pen. 

Looking back on it now, I understand why I was so insistent on writing in invisible ink. It promised an extra degree of privacy. I’m not sure what deep, dark secrets my seven-year-old self thought she was hiding, but being able to keep them concealed felt comforting. Indeed, this is the beauty of keeping a diary. It’s the only truly private form of literary expression. It’s an intimate process of writing to yourself, for yourself. A way of documenting your innermost thoughts, feelings and experiences, without having to share them with anyone else. 

I still keep countless little journals hidden around my bedroom. I have one where I keep all the cards and letters people have ever written to me. In another, I store mementos that I can’t bring myself to part with: ticket stubs, receipts, photographs, newspaper clippings. My favourite Moleskine notebook is filled with things people have said to me in passing that I don’t want to forget; a collection of minuscule moments that I crave to capture in time. Even the Notes app on my phone is clustered with song lyrics, compliments from strangers, and dream anecdotes. By writing down and pasting in pieces of my past that are packed with sentiment, I feel like I’m able to preserve them forever.

                                                Image: lilartsy via Unsplash.

At the start of a new year, I always start a new diary of some description. For 2022, I’m compiling a scrapbook. University passes by in a frenzied blur of summative essays and drunken nights out, and I want to make something that can help me slow time and remember all the good things that have happened. I’m never the same person at the end of the year as I was at the beginning. Each experience that unfolds along the way, whether it be good or bad, shapes and moulds me into an entirely different person. Keeping a journal is immensely cathartic to me, as it helps me trace my steps and watch the ways in which I’ve evolved. 

Writing a diary is an innately cathartic process. It offers the opportunity to slow down, to suspend precious moments in time, to reflect. It helps us cling onto the moments we feel nostalgic for before they’ve even finished flickering by. It allows us to look back at who we have been, and project forwards to who we wish to become. In a world that moves so quickly, a diary is the perfect way to distil yourself in each page that you write. Each line melts into the next, like a dot-to-dot drawing of the memories that have comprised your journey. By the time you’ve filled the last page of your notebook, you have crafted an item that is intrinsically you. It is your own unique experience; you are and will always be the only person to have lived it and felt it in precisely the way that you have. And that’s a beautiful thing to preserve.

A diary is an outlet. A place where you can be entirely honest, offload any anxieties or bitterness, and air the feelings that you don’t wish to articulate aloud. There is no fear of judgment or prying eyes. It is a platform that allows you to find permanence in the transient. And at the end of the year, it’s deeply rewarding to relive your highs, your lows, your mistakes, and your crescendos.

https://www.palatinate.org.uk/when-catharsis-and-expression-collide/

 

Consistently inconsistent: my battle with journaling

From nouse.co.uk

Emily Warner explores the benefits of journaling as a New Year's resolution

A quick Google search for, ‘the number of people who fail to keep their New Year’s resolution’ yields hundreds of studies that all show the same thing – we are not very good at sticking to our goals. The statistics vary but it seems that about two thirds of people give up their New Year’s resolution within the first month and I willingly admit that usually, I am a part of that majority.

Every 1 January, brimming with the excitement of a new year ahead and fuelled by a smattering of self-improvement ads, I sit down, sharpen my pencil, and vow to keep a diary. I don’t know if it is the part of myself that vaguely aspires to be a writer, or the beautifully rendered pages of calligraphy I see on my Instagram or perhaps a genuine attempt to reflect on my day, but regardless I have always wanted to commit to journaling. Inevitably, life and its pragmatism intervene and within several days my goal has dissipated into an ether of unfulfilled resolutions from years past. I watch as it fades into the abyss alongside half-hearted attempts to take up Zumba, run a marathon, or drink six litres of water every day and resign myself to failure.

Not this year. This year, I have set myself a goal which is impossible to fail and that is to be consistently inconsistent in my approach to journaling. Let me elaborate.

                                               Image Credit: Emily Warner

It all began with a notebook. Not a fancy bullet journal with gold-leaf embellishments and neat boxes of lines, demanding to be filled. Nor a diary with a date scrawled across each page, dictating how much and which day to write (if I am doing exams, I will need a LOT of room to complain about them). Just a simple, lined notebook. My downfall, I realised, was the sense of obligation that accompanied keeping a diary, making the process feel more like a chore than a pleasure. Therefore, I need only eliminate that pressure by writing intermittently instead of daily. This meant that if I was stressed, or excited, or happy, I could pour out my verbal diarrhoea onto the page uninhibited (and save the ears of my flatmates who are usually forced to hear it). Alternatively, if my biggest achievement of the day is ‘I bought a 32p banana at Aldi’, I don’t have to write anything at all that day. This method has the bonus of making my life seem way more exciting than it really is because every entry is usually a melodramatic monologue about something.

I am not just a crazy English student though, there is lots of scientific evidence showing the benefits of journaling in many different aspects of life. Firstly, there are obvious psychological benefits that emerge from the process of free writing (essentially the act of writing in an uninhibited way without judgement – so the opposite of writing an essay). It is also sometimes known as stream of consciousness, a term that first emerged in 1980. This practice involves writing without expectation so that the writing produced is often raw and emotional and encourages the beneficial process of emotional confrontation and reflection. As a result, stress levels decrease and mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, PTSD and body image distortions can be alleviated, feelings which most students are familiar with in some form.

Improved well being in itself is a huge advantage of writing, but the benefits do not end there. Science has shown that journaling can lower blood pressure, boost the immune system and increase our ability to fight serious illnesses. That means you can stop popping your vitamin D pills and pick up a pen instead; an essay a day keeps the Covid away (to clarify, this is not backed up by scientific evidence so don’t be too quick emptying your medicine cabinet). Keeping a diary is also important for memory function because the act of recalling and recording the day employs our working memory, associated with absorbing and applying new information.

On top of this, journaling increases our self-awareness and invites reflection on our relationships, sometimes helping us to negotiate issues and strengthen our bond with others. You can say that next time someone accidently reads your journal and finds a long list of complaints, perhaps a page dedicated to ‘top ten ways my mother drives me mad’ or ‘reasons my friends are all irritating cows’ (not that I’ve written anything like that before). In total sincerity however, this space to reconsider the way you interact with those around you can be helpful for navigating the messy world of girlfriends, boyfriends, best friends, parents, Terrence from next door and whoever else you are dealing with. It is a complicated world out there.

Perhaps I am a slightly dramatic person by nature, but I find the act of writing down my emotions and anxieties an effective way of managing these feelings.  The phrase ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ is frequently thrown around but sharing a problem is not always possible. Sometimes we don’t want to talk or we don’t have anyone willing to listen but I promise you, an empty page is always happy to share the burden. So why not try starting your own journal? Write your way to better memory, better health, better relationships, and a happier mind and if you don’t notice any differences, at least you’ve written a bestseller by the end of it (if any of you do get to publish your journal, I’ll be expecting a vote of thanks in the acknowledgments). I think that sounds like a New Year’s resolution worth keeping.

https://nouse.co.uk/2022/01/13/consistently-inconsistent-my-battle-with-journaling-

 

Eagle Archives, Jan. 10, 1940: Local woman's diary-keeping record surpassed by former resident of Berkshire Massachusetts

From berkshireeagle.com

From the Jan. 10, 1940, Eagle 

Fifty-one years is a long time, but keeping a diary for that period kept the championship for that particular type of journal in the possession of Mrs. Henry J. Eldridge of 19 Harvard Street for only one week.

Today it was learned that George C. Dunbar of Westfield, a former resident of this city, had been making daily notations pertaining to himself and his family for 59 years. As Mr. Dunbar stated in a letter to The Eagle:

“I am not willing to have a woman beat me out, even though it is a leap year.”

The one time Pittsfield man who was employed by the Pittsfield Electric Company as an engineer started to chronicle his life story on Jan. 1, 1881, and hasn’t missed a day since. He has all of the diaries except for the first four which he recently destroyed, retaining their record.

As the years passed, Mr. Dunbar’s children became interested in his painstaking efforts, and requested that he provide each one of them with a copy. Therefore in 1932, he started to type up all of his diaries. He used carbon paper, and made three copies, one for each of his children.

According to his figures, the history covered 184 closely-written pages, and contained 86,400 words. Actual typing required 210 hours.

He wrote a dedicatory preface to each of his children, and then had the manuscript bound in book form under the title of “My Diary Book, 1885-1933.”

With the passage of eight more years, Mr. Dunbar feels it soon will be time to add the intervening records in manuscript form as a supplement to the original volume.

All of the important events of his life, the activity of his children from birth to maturity, and most of the important national and local happenings of the past half century are included in the diaries. There is a very complete section on the World War, and a detailed story of the March (1888) blizzard.

For many years, Mr. Dunbar was supervisor of the Westfield Power Company. He is a brother-in-law of Frank Howard of this city, having married Miss Celestia Howard at her South Street home Oct. 10, 1888. Rev. I. C. Smart, then pastor of the South Congregational Church, officiated.

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/history/eagle-archives-jan-10-1940-local-womans-diary-keeping-record-surpassed-by-former-resident-of/article_b3d0b0ee-6d76-11ec-94b4-f3fe7d1ab62c.html

Write it down: Keeping a journal can be a productive way to cope with uncertain times

From cbc.ca

Putting your thoughts, feelings and experiences down on paper could improve your health and memory

The past two years have had ups and downs for licensed practical nurse Stephanie Rimando, who works at a hospital in Metro Vancouver and at a long-term care facility.

But dealing with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic has been eased by a long-term habit she started as a teenager: writing in a journal.

Rimando, 29, started keeping a diary when she was 17 to cope with her mother being abroad.

"I just wrote all my thoughts, my emotions, all my experiences and it made me feel like someone is listening to me, so that was the start of my journalling," she said.

She's kept up with the practice, writing regularly at night before she goes to bed. She says it helps her sleep, helps her understand herself better, and helps her face the current uncertain times.

"I just write all my anxious thoughts in my diary and it really helped me process those thoughts and it really helped me prepare for the next day for my shift," she said.

Stephanie Rimando, a nurse in Metro Vancouver, writes each night in her journal before going to bed. (Stephanie Rimando)

Rimando and others like her say keeping a journal is an inexpensive habit with plenty of rewards, which scientific study seems to support.

There have been numerous studies over the past decades that have looked at how expressive writing can help people deal with traumatic experiences, cope with anxiety and depression, and also perform better on tests.

American author Julia Cameron has for decades written about the power of being creative and expressive. A book she wrote 30 years ago, called The Artist's Way, discussed the concept of "morning pages," a daily ritual of writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness ramblings.

"Writing daily pages gives us a witness to our lives and brings us optimism and generosity and encouragement and fulfilment and just a lot of positive things," she said from her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Julia Cameron wrote about the concept of making daily, stream-of-consciousness journals entries in her 1992 book The Artist's Way. (Robert Stivers)

She said that The Artist's Way has made it back to the top of some bestseller lists recently as she believes the pandemic has pushed many people to find ways to cope with the uncertain times.

"I think that the book's reputation is that it is supportive, so I think people in COVID, when they're casting about for, 'Gee what can I do to feel better about myself to feel less trapped,' they turn to the book," she said.

Social media as public diary

Cameron acknowledges technology has changed since 1992, when the book was first published, and that many people now like to share their thoughts and feelings over social media. But she encourages people to do private writing that no one will ever see.

"I think morning pages are so private and so personal and so naughty because people are putting down what they actually think and what they actually feel," she said. "I find the idea of going public with your pages to be counter-productive."

Back in B.C. another long-time journal-keeper, Laurie Anderson, who also began keeping a journal in high school and is still at it 40 years later, says there is also a practical side to having a box full of books that you wrote.

"It's absolutely fabulous to have a record of what was important to me at 17, 25, 33, 48," she wrote in an email.

Rimando and Cameron both encourage people to try doing private, expressive writing as a way to start the new year, whether daily or once in a while, trying to form it as a new habit.

"Try trusting that you will receive benefits," said Cameron. "Pages train you to expand."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/journal-keeping-during-tough-times-1.6287076 

5 Benefits Of Kids Keeping A Journal

From moms.com

From navigating emotions to reading and writing skills, there are many benefits to kids keeping a journal

Kids have a lot of big emotions that they need to sort through in order to successfully navigate through childhood. Not only does the processing of these feelings help them to understand some emotions that they may have never experienced before but doing this can also help with seeing the point of view of others in their lives. And while working through emotions is necessary to remain mentally healthy, some kids do not have the desire to verbalize how they feel with others. As such, these kids would benefit from keeping a journal to write down everything they think and feel, sharing optional bits as they deem necessary along the way.

Journaling is an open-ended way that helps kids to work through emotions on paper that perhaps feel too jumbled to work through in the mind alone. By doing this, according to Scholastic, kids are able to process their thoughts while sorting through negative feelings. This helps kids to understand why they feel the way they do and perhaps see other perspectives as well. And because they know that nothing will be shared from the journal unless they choose to do so, there is a safety in being able to say whatever they want on paper that kids may not feel comfortable with saying otherwise.

Here are some benefits of kids keeping a journal.

5 Kids Can Process Their Emotions Through Journaling

via Pexels/Polina Kovaleva

Kids are bombarded with emotions daily. Some of those emotions are bigger than others to sort through, especially if not sure where to begin sorting. That is why a journal is beneficial because kids can write down how they feel without feeling judged or teased in the process.

According to the University of Rochester Medical Center, journaling is a very effective way to maintain a mentally healthy lifestyle. This is important because even though on the surface it appears that kids are carefree, they still have stressors that they face, along with problems and fears that they need to work through to remain emotionally healthy.

The emotions that kids feel are not always something that they want to share with their friends or family initially because they need a moment to sit with them. Sometimes, they do not share them at all. And according to the publication, not all emotions need to be shared. But if they can be written down and sorted through, that is all part of the process of living a healthy lifestyle that if continued through childhood will reap benefits as kids age.

4 Helps Kids To Find A Voice When Reluctant To Speak

via Pexels/Content Pixie

While kids may be able to work through their emotions in their heads, sometimes it is necessary to get those feelings out and acknowledge them before sorting through them is truly done. And for those who are not able to effectively verbalize how they feel to others, writing in a journal allows them to do so.

According to the National AfterSchool Association when kids write down what they think and feel, they are able to get emotions, both positive and negative, out of their bodies and sort through them more effectively. When the feelings have nowhere to go because kids do not want to speak about them, they can fester if they are negative or continue to become more confusing for those never experienced before. As such, putting the pen to the paper helps to get thoughts organized, so that if kids decide they do want to speak with someone about how they feel, they have worked through emotions enough to be able to succinctly communicate those emotions to a trusted ear willing to listen.

3 Ranting Through Writing Helps To Vent Frustrations

via Pexels/Jessica Lynn Lewis

Sometimes, kids just need to get their frustrations out. This could be with a situation, with friends, or even with family. And rather than take those frustrations out on others, journaling is a great way to ease those big emotions.

According to the Center for Child Counseling, journals are a fantastic outlet for letting kids work through the frustrations that they have with others be it through a first-hand account of an incident or through storytelling in which a character experiences the same frustrations as the writer. In both instances, kids are able to not only get the frustrations down on paper in front of them to read over, but they are also able to work through those frustrations as well. And by doing this, the hope is that a resolution can be found so that instead of venting face-to-face, emotions can be talked through in a calm and effective manner.

2 Kids Can See Different Perspectives Through Journaling

via Pexels/Dom J

Sometimes it takes writing things down to understand where others were coming from during an interaction. Journaling is very beneficial in this regard.

According to CHOC, when kids are able to see things from another person's perspective, not only do they gain insight about the other person but about themselves as well. By being able to see things in a new light can change the entire way that life is seen or lived.

It may take a while for the insight to come. But for those who review their writing, many times there is an "a-ha" moment had and clarity gained that allows a situation to be seen with fresh eyes.

1 Journaling Helps With Writing Skills

via Pexels/Anete Lusina

When kids pick up a pen to write in a journal, they know that they are not going to be judged on the content of their writing or how grammatically correct it is. Therefore, it does not matter how strong their writing skills are. Journaling consistently, however, has a way of improving writing skills without kids even realizing it.

According to Brain Balance, when kids are tasked with "meaningful writing" they do not feel it is a chore. They know that there are no wrong answers or judgments for what they write in their journals, so there is no longer a dread that comes with writing. When this happens, kids are open to writing more and with more writing comes more experience that can "springboard" into more "complex writing tasks," per the publication. This makes kids more comfortable with writing in general and therefore strengthens writing skills across the board, all thanks to journaling.

https://www.moms.com/kids-keeping-journal-benefits/

A question a day keeps the memories alive

From thesundaily.my

Keeping a daily journal is a great way to keep track of events and reflect on all the changes that happened through the years

HAVE you ever found an old diary you wrote when you were 14 years old, stowed away in a dusty cupboard? The emotions written by the past you might feel so raw, open, and real, but sometimes, the incident might feel distant, like a dream that happened a long time ago. The way memory works is that the more memorable the images accompanying an event are, the more likely it will become a long-term memory.

The appeal of a journal or a diary is the way it creates and recreates an experience by allowing the author to jot down a story to be read and remembered across time and space. Like a time capsule, it is memories materialised, and coming across it again allows you to unlock a core memory long forgotten. It is to remember that yes, you existed, before, now, and then.

The premise of a question a day journal is exactly what it sounds like. You have 365 (plus an extra for a leap year) question prompts for you to answer every day for as long as you like. The idea is to see candidly what has changed, how you’ve changed, and maybe even what you missed and would like to revisit.

The topics of the questions range from ordinary everyday events like what you had for lunch, to contemplative questions like ‘what would you do for free?’. The longer you keep the daily journal habit, the longer you’ll be able to look back upon the time span.

There isn’t any format that you have to strictly adhere to because you can make it entirely yours by modifying the questions to suit whatever you’re interested in knowing about yourself. This allows you to have something to look forward to every day.

Most questions will only take a few seconds to a few minutes for you to answer depending on the type of questions.

You don’t necessarily have to start the journal on the first of January or stress out about missing a day. Just take it as something enjoyable, a little bit of present (pun intended) for your future self.

Firstly, you’ll need a notebook with at least 365 pages in it for the days in a year, but if you’re a person that gets to the point fast, you can also have fewer pages. Personally, I’ve used two notebooks, separating the year into two parts, so it isn’t too bulky to carry around.

If you’d like, you can even do it online and answer everything on your phone, but if you’re more of a pen-to-paper type of person, having a physical book can allow more creative prompts like attaching things inside or drawing things.

For anybody who has ever given up journaling or has been intimidated by a blank page, a question a day journaling makes journaling effortless and the beauty of it is that it enables the author to track their emotional growth as well as keep track of memories, including presenting an interesting walk down memory lane a few years later.

The point is to see that living is not just about goals or mere achievements.

Maybe to live is to be present at every moment, to enjoy every sip of coffee or every conversation with a friend. Maybe to live is about the little things, the ones we tend to forget about or do it on autopilot.

When we are mindful and present, I suppose that’s when we’re really living.

Here are some journaling prompts you can start with for your first month:

1. What’s something unexpected, that happened to you last year?

2. When do you feel most in tune with yourself?

3. If someone described you, what would they say?

4. What was the most exciting thing that happened today?

5. What was the best meal you had today?

6. What was the worst meal you had today?

7. Draw something about today.

8. Write a poem about something that happened today.

9. Keep the receipts of everything you bought today and stick them on this page.

10. What was the most boring thing you had to do today?

11. What did you wear today?

12. What did you have inside your bag today?

13. Who did you meet today?

14. What are you looking forward to next week?

15. When and what was the last workout you did?

16. When was the last time you got sick?

17. What’s the funniest thing you heard all day?

18. What’s your favourite song at the moment?

19. Write down a list of things you’d like to accomplish by the end of this year and check back next year.

20. What made you angry today?

21. What TV shows are you watching?

22. What’s a song that would be the perfect background music for what happened today?

23. What’s the last book you read?

24. What’s something you’ve been obsessed with lately?

25. Take a picture of yourself with your instant camera and paste it on this page.

26. What’s the last advice you were given? What did you think about it?

27. Where did you go today?

28. Who did you talk to today?

29. Who did you text today?

30. What made you sad today?

https://www.thesundaily.my/style-life/a-question-a-day-keeps-the-memories-alive-KK8639862