Dear diary…

When I was younger, I had to write my short novels using a cheap typewriter. That was a necessity, because I have utterly terrible handwriting (even I have a hard time to understand what the hell I have written). However, paper and ink wasn’t cheap. After some time, I had to stop using the typewriter too. I had to write, though. As many writers know, it isn’t something you just can stop at will. It is the urge.

So, I started to write a diary. At first I used the diary as a some sort of collection of infinite wisdoms. As a teenager. Right. Ahem.

I had a pretty rough patch in my life about 15–20 years ago. I had a diary that had all the small details about the things that happened during those times. The book was lost during the bankruptcy auction when I was in the army, and I don’t know what happened to it. I would be willing to pay thousands of euros if I just could get it back.

Last year, I started to write a diary again. This time I didn’t feel any pressure about the quality of the text. I just wrote anything that I felt was worth of mentioning. People, places, feelings — that kind of stuff. It feels awesome.

I prefer large lined Moleskine. It is kinda cliché, because Moleskine is the only notebook that a true hipster can use. I don’t care. I love it. It is sturdy, paper is good quality and it smells right. It is something you just want to touch. I tried using normal ballpoint pen for writing, but it felt too heavy to use. Normal ink pen wasn’t fun either, because the ink has a tendency to smudge pages. Now I use gel ink pen, which is perfect. Ink is liquid enough so that you don’t have to press it too hard, and the gel ink dries fast.

Best part of the diary is that you can actually empty your head bucket on a regular basis. It is much less crowded in there when you can filter relevant stuff out and on the paper.