In true Bridget Jones spirit I bought a new diary the other week.
I love diaries. I love filling out the details on the first page and putting in all the family birthdays and special events to come (not that I always remember them!). Before the year starts I like flicking through the clean pages with room for notes against each month. My last two diaries have been particularly brilliant as they even have tear out pages for shopping lists or other vital notes.
Even though I have a digital calendar on my phone, I still love my physical diary with pages. It’s a bit like reading a book, as opposed to articles online. There are some things we never tire of.
A few years ago, finding good diaries for my communications team was a bit of a ritual. When the catalogue for ordering the very corporate plain black or blue dairies came around the departments we all shook our heads. “We’ll find something more colourful,” I assured the team. For one very practical reason it was easy to distinguish whose was whose and to spot them amidst even the most cluttered workspace. So, each autumn I would ensure that I chose spotty, striped or other patterned versions that fitted our team spirit and brightened up the desks. Somehow the arrival of those brightly coloured diaries on our desks cut through any autumn gloom and signalled the start of exciting new things to come, even if we didn’t know what was ahead there were dozens of fresh pages to fill with deadlines, events and even holidays to be added in.
Like most people, my diary for this year is a poor relation to those of previous years. It is full of rubbed out events and trips, with lots of what appear to be blank weeks – ah, that would be lockdown! So, as my very stylish 2020 diary is consigned to the bottom drawer, I am really hoping for something fresh in the new year. I will dutifully fill in the events for 2021 that coronavirus cannot cancel, like birthdays and anniversaries, but I’m wondering what else I might be able to add in…
After all, I’ve been thinking – “we walk by faith, not by sight.”
rachelfarmer 