I’m never sure whether diaries should be written at the start or the end of each day. I suppose it depends what the purpose of the diary is - whether it is to record what happened or, as in my case, to compel me into the writing habit. As such, it makes sense to write it at the beginning of the day about the day before (if that can be remembered). This will also avoid the destructive self-recrimination you often get at the end of a disappointing day. The morning after should also give your diary the perspective it needs to avoid becoming the mere jotting down of your current state (not that that is necessarily uninteresting - my sense of liberation at not being at work, bringing back cool memories of being a full-time freelancer, is deeply interesting to me.) Anyhow, here is yesterday.
Norman Cousins apparently cured himself of cancer by watching comedy films. His positivity and happiness was better for the body than all the chemotherapy and drugs, showing - to a legion of self-help authors - the power of the mind. I am rarely ill, so until now I have never had the chance to fully test out the Cousins hypothesis. For the purpose of my study I used Curb Your Enthusiasm and Meet the Parents, both of which have their laugh out loud moments. The results? No significant improvement until the following morning when my fever had all-but-abated.
After Meet the Parents, I watched a documentary about a real Elephant Man, a young Chinese bloke whose face is a mass of hideous tumours. Like John Merrick, he was a sensitive chap who enjoyed each day as it came. It was very sad and unfair. After that I watched another documentary by Rageeh Omar on immigration. It was, mainly, about the irony that settled immigrants are now racist against new immigrants - subjecting them to the same abuses that they themselves suffered. Personally, I feel the world is over-populated and that human life is being devalued. We need to find a humane (prophylactic?) way of reducing human numbers to around, say, 1 billion. Civilization is not improved by more human beings, it is diluted.
The question that always gets me when I start writing regularly is: to what end? What is the purpose of these sputterings into the ether? Hopefully, by forcing me to write everyday, they will increase my writing muscles - improving my sentence construction and sentience quotient.
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