This is the shortest gap between blogs for the last year. The fact that prior to this the gaps had been so wide and this one so brief tells me (and hopefully you) quite a bit. The simplest message being that I must be feeling better, Not by any means perfection but then perfection was never a word in my lexicon even before all this health stuff kicked off.
The focus for this blog was inspired by a source outside my own life events and that’s a good sign I think. The source was an article on the BBC website entitled. (If any subject could be more relevant to me at this point well I don’t know what it is). The title was, ‘Can writing a diary protect your mental health?’ The short answer in my opinion is yes. Read the article to find out more – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67474890.
I can safely say, without fear of contradiction, that my diary has never been more important to me than this last year. And I say that as a man who has written a diary (every day) since 1979. Unsurprisingly I’ve written two previous blogs about the role of diaries in my life. I suggest you search for and read them alongside this one for the full picture. Or see links below.
If you were to read my diaries prior to this one (and you will have to take my word for this) you would notice one big difference to the one this year. And I’m not referring to the content either which obviously would be very different, obviously as this has been the worst year by some distance to any that went before. This year my diary has very much been my weapon of choice against that great enemy – feeling that your life is out of control.
Writing stuff down helps or at least I believe it does. But what is different this year is that I’ve numericised the daily events (is that even a word?). Not difficult when there is so little in terms of events happening, more importantly, turning life into numbers at times of difficulty makes me feel more in control.
I can compare those numbers from day to day, week to week to determine what kind of progress I’m making. Obviously there are times when the data tells me I’m not making progress or even going backwards. In which case the helpful response for the control freak (that’s me) will be, that’s interesting, why is that and what do I need to do about it? This of course makes me sound more in control and more optimistic than has sometimes been the case. There have been times which to describe them as desperate would be to over-value them. Anyway, back to the diary and its role in my recovery.
You may get some idea of what a typical day looks like (I’m not going to explain the data) from the picture of my diary pages at the top of this retirement blog. If you can’t make any sense of it then don’t worry I’m sure you’ve got the main message of this blog – a diary helps you feel in control when everything around you is conspiring to make you feel out of control. That’s all.