Oh what fun times.

I have this thing for diaries. And journals. And fancy notepads. Anything with pages. I’ve had it since my childhood. In my tweens I wanted that time’s rage- the diary with a lock. Because my tweenage secrets obviously require maximum safety and protected from brother called beings. I never got that diary, but I did invent a secret language so I can write without fear. It was just a chart of symbols I made to correspond to each letter of the alphabet. For the first few entries I made sure I wrote it in my secret language. What a kick it was knowing that my brothers couldn’t access my deepest darkest secrets.

Then one day I was very tired. So I wrote that day’s entry in English. And of course I wrote about my crush on that day. And of course my brothers decided to go through my diary the moment I fell asleep. The next day they announced to the whole world and their mother about my crush. All the kids in our school van, in the neighborhood, and also my cousins were gleefully informed about it.

Oh what fun times. Not.

Anyway, coming back to my love for diaries. I adore them. I like the classy leather-bound ones and the funky colorful ones. I like to do list diaries and bullet journals. I like branded office journals and generic annual journals. I just have an irrational love for them.

The chief sufferer right now because of this is my husband. I confiscate any kind of stationery he gets from office. When he tries to take notes, he finds I have already marked the book with my name.

I have diaries for personal reflections, for my poems, for work stuff, for Ramadan stuff, for my future…I look up things I can have journals for. I can’t explain the thrill of getting a new journal, feeling the cover, and smelling the pages. And the best of all- writing my name of it and claiming it as mine. It’s just something I enjoy so much.

So why am I writing this? Just to share that you need something you are irrationally taken by. Something which makes you as happy as a child in a candy store (or me in a stationery shop). Find that one hobby or passion or skill and pursue it. Be it knitting or kick boxing or tie dying or stamp-collecting. This is what makes you, you. When life gets too hectic and new hurdles seem to come out of nowhere, you need something to remind you of you are and what you love. Do this for yourself.