Journalling

Its been three years since I first started writing in this blog. I was in Jakarta, at the airport then. Right now, I am at my regular hairdresser's, here in Singapore, starting on entry #110. Its the longest sustained period of diary keeping. 

Back in my schooldays, I would typically start the year with a resolve to record key activities of the day. I would keep it up for a few weeks, and then as weeks turn to months, my entries would slip from daily records to weekly ones, and usually by the end of the first quarter, I would cease the endeavour altogether. Truth be told it was largely because as a student, there just wasn't too much going on and by the first 3 months of the year, I would have more than sampled every activity a schoolboy would experience for the year: class, homework, sports, test, results, friends, relatives and the occasional outing downtown (to either Emporium or Madam King's, the only large departmental store in town) or to my maternal grandparents' place in Batang.

Secondly, I probably got lazy ;)

And I remember one time I stopped because I saw my mom sneaking a peek into my diary. She had just returned from a weekend in Batang and dad had taken us downtown to the movies (if I recall correctly I think it was Jaws, or Abba the movie). She probably wanted to confirm what he told her and went to another source of news. I had left my diary on the closet and naturally didn't like the fact it's privacy was 'violated'.

Yes, that was the time when such recordings are strictly personal and nothing written was ever meant for another's eyes. Millennials today may not understand this fully as they live and record their lives for public consumption.

In any case, I moved on from keeping these short lived diaries to penning my thoughts when I travel. As I often ventured abroad (be it across Thailand, or Indonesia or even further afield to Japan, Europe and USA) my travelogue became my companion. I had taken to backpacking on a shoestring alone and having "someone" to listen to me helped!

Then I found my soulmate, D, who loves the written word and I would write to her almost daily, be it from Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Zürich when we kept up our Long distance relationship. These letters became a special and visceral part of our love; and indeed our feelings for each other are captured posterity in them.

The kids came after our marriage and I started writing to them instead. I had bought these sets of beautifully leather bound books in Florence and poured my words and emotions into them whenever I cannot be with the kids. In fact, even after the computer became my word processor of choice, I would still print out what I have documented and paste them onto these beautiful books.

And then the blogs came. I resisted it at first because unlike all other record keeping devices of the past, this one is not private. It's as private as someone's disinterest in me. So, at some stage, it could well become public. Enough of my social life is already on Facebook and my professional one on LinkedIn, though somewhat curated. And images I like are on Instagram. Still, beyond all that, I am comforted that for well over 40 years, much of what I have written will remain private or only meant for D, J and M.