Dear Diary...

I guess that I have always been a life writer. Who gave me that first red leather diary at age 10, I wonder? In it are recorded my friends, my meals, my dogs and some of my doings. Only 4 lines are allowed for each day so it is very concise. The blue-black cloth cover of the first diary I wrote at boarding school is ragged. The lines of writing in it are overrun by doodles and graffiti applied during prep as I struggled to stifle yawns of boredom.
As I pass through the years of adolescence the diaries get larger and are filled not only with the passions and disappointments of teenagehood but with cuttings, tickets and cards. My life is documented in detail. There is a gap while I am at uni - no time for introspection or documentation there. A brief and tantalising glimpse of my first marriage break-up is noted in a loose leaf folder from the time. Then I am obsessive about recording my babies births and milestones.
As the children grow more independent I write more in my journals - yes, journals rather than diaries, at this stage, I think. They are where I work out my ideas and values and chew through decisions and situations I don't fully comprehend. Somehow writing puts it all in order, makes it actual and understandable.
My current journal is all these things plus a creative space. I write haiku, tanka and poetry. I sketch ideas for stories and for this blog. Photographs and montages grace its pages. I record and savour journeys, dreams and conversations.
But now this blog takes a lot of my journalling time. Blogging is different to journalling. The audience is obviously different. What I write in my journal is for my eyes and heart only, what I write on here must not tread on any toes or reveal too much self in public. I am careful of the self I construct here. In my journal I am like the old house at "Myall Park" which just grew higgledy piggledy. In here I am more like the well-thought out and carefully planned home of your dreams squeezed onto a Gungahlin block.