It is far too tedious for me to keep an actual diary of my thoughts. As a writer, every single entry ends up a thousand-or-so-word ramble detailing my feelings in lines of purple prose, using film references and sarcastic remarks.
As a reader, though, I love to annotate my books. I write exactly what I’m thinking about silly scenes, romantic moments, and dramatic twists. It’s where I can freely express what I’m thinking and feeling, without any care for what it sounds like. The short remarks I print in the margins of novels, between the lines of dialogue, paired with doodles and scrawls, reflect my state of being as I read. When I look back on books I’d read previously, I am immediately transported to that era of my lifetime— what I was going through, how I was processing things, and how much of the world I’d experienced yet.