Why Keeping a Diary is so Hard??

With 2019 almost here, wondering why so many blank pages in the diary for 2018

A brief history me of keeping a diary:

Two days ago I bought a brand new diary for the coming year. At the age of 24, this is the first time I have bought one for myself. The first memory of writing one goes back to the age of under ten when I wrote my heart out in a pocket phone number book when I was feeling strongly about my father suddenly falling sick. Until recently I wrote only when I had very strong emotions and no one to talk to.

I remember collecting diaries we got as gifts and never using one as a teenager. The diary for 2018 was gifted by a very close friend and I thought I will write every day, but if I combine all the entries in that it will be less than two months.

The challenges I face:

Feeling guilty of not using a thoughtful gift, I tried to think of reasons why we fail at it.

• It is quite common, at least in the society I live in, to find people who just laugh at the idea of keeping a diary. I realized it when I went shopping and got one for my secret-Santa-child.
• When you rise above the first point and start keeping one and tell someone close to you, they get very curious and want to read it. Which brings us to the next point.
• Keeping it hidden is a task in itself. I have to hide it every time someone is coming to stay in my room.
• It seems something we can do at the lowest energy level at the end of the day until it is too late and we can barely manage to brush our teeth.
• The events of the day seem too trivial and too fresh in our memory that writing those down feels un-necessary.
• The same way we do not take mental health as seriously as physical health, we do not glorify writing a diary as going to the gym.
• We do not have a fixed time to sit and write in a diary, we either forget it or keep delaying until it is too late and too hard.

The new-year resolutions:

• I will be fixing fifteen minutes period, which can be any time after coming back from work, dedicated to sitting with a pen and the diary and away from phone and laptop.
• I will re-read the previous entries every week. (and every month, every quarter, every six months??)
• I will not make it just about logging the events of the day I can recall, but focus more on how and why I learned something, felt, and acted in a particular way.

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Let me know what are your resolutions about keeping a diary for 2019 and what challenges you encounter.