The end of an era

I am 29 years old right now. When I was ten my aunt bought me my first diary. The first year I doodled and wrote down some stuff here and there, but not everything that happened to me. The year I turned eleven I bought a new diary and wrote every single day. And I have done it ever since. If I want to check out what my thirteen year old self did on the 14th of May, I can find that out. And I’ll probably laugh. Or cry.

For 18 years I have written every single day. But ten days ago, I stopped.

I started writing to get stuff off my chest and to have a log to go back to for info if I needed it. But in all the years of writing, I have only read from my diary like ten times. When I wrote my final words ten days ago, I realized that it had become a burden. That instead of being all creative and analyzing, I now just list everything I do every day. What I eat, what I do at work, who I hang out with and so on. There is no soul in these diaries. Not anymore.

So, I stopped.

And you know what? It feels fucking amazing. The first week I felt really bad, almost guilty, for not keeping up with my tradition…but now, it feels like I have set myself free in a way. As if it was an important step on the path of becoming the final version of myself (if we are ever finished).

What’s the point of living in the now if you have to report every single thing you do?