while I have always been a reader, you have helped me to become a diarist. It helps me to understand how and why I have come to grief.
For most of my life, I had practiced this "Weather Watching" you mention. I think that feeling I had to burn my lifetime collection of "diaries of a madman" simply to make room for books and my current project of organizing my "old school boy" working through exercises may have impacted me. I don't ramble on writing about petty aggravations anymore. What I mean is that I write very little these days that is not related to something "technical". Trust me, though, if something dramatic were to occur in my personal life, I surely would try to work through it by articulating my experiences.
Maybe part has to do with being able to converse here, meaning that this message board is a kind of diary where you and raul and a few others may be the audience, whereas with my "diaries," there was no audience.
I still keep a notebook separate from the math notebooks, but I rarerly jot in it. I still do, since eventually it gets filled up, but so much of it is some kind of technical revelation, some kind of insight that seems very special and significant to me. For instance, if I made an important change to a header file for a Fraction class, I make a note in my "Mind Shiftings" notebook. Why is it worthy of being discussed in a "diary"? Well, I first created a simple Fraction class (C++) in 1998 during a course at a community college. I still remember the name of the professor/instructor, Patricia Hines, who is now since retired. She was very proud of me for what I had accomplished. My genuine love for mathematics gave me a special kind of enthusiasm for the "project," which was to create a C++ class to represent an object called a Fraction, that is, a rational number with members: numerator and denominator, both integers.
1998, Holden! Over 20 years ago ... And I had returned to college as an "old man" - Hell, I was over 31 years old. I already felt old. Now I know I am old, no matter what the elderly say about me being "still a young man". I know better. I'm fuucking old. Too old to be getting "giddy" over a Fraction class. And yet!
And so, while some might be disappointed to discover that the contents of my "secret diary" are just a series of entries where I am continuing a conversation with myself about where I am at, it is what it is. I still remeber back in 1996 or so, writing in my "notebook" how I did not want to go out for another "blast" of rock co-caine ... and then succumbing anyway ... and then trying to write myself through it even though I could barely scribble for days afterward.
Yes, as one has has been a compulsive diarist throughout his life, those periods where my organism became the host, held hostage to the demons craving intoxication, euphoria, and oblivion, the part of me that longed to keep track of "the psychological and emotional weather" would experience a kind of panic and remorse witnessing that all "the I" could do is watch and experience, but unable to articulate nor verbalize. That animal is still here. He ( It ) appreciates these conversations in this medium. I feel much better about typing my thoughts here than scribbling on paper ... I am saving paper and "space" for mathematical work.
Maybe I use my diaries for writing down some technical revelation, sharing the enthusiasm with no one other than myself because, for me, now this is my private inner life. Yep, it is almost too private to share in public, a certain kind of enthusiasm over such things as rational numbers would appear to be "unmanly" at best, and downright "corny" at worst.
I am glad you have declared yourself a diarist, and I am honored that you claim I had this influence on you. Keeping records of my "mood weather" has been a huge part of my life. That I happen to fill notebooks with school mathematics these days is more than a little weird, but, to me, such is the nature of my private life these days. That is what my weather looks like now. You will not find any pining away for unattainable brown-eyed bronze-skinned women in these pages. No, they may still swirl around in my imagination deep inside my head, but such fantasies no longer have any kind of grip on my conscious attention.
At last, now I really am becoming older, and I am not at all sad about this situation. I am glad to age, and as I lose my marbles, so be it.
I no longer find a need to write too many "forbidden thoughts," but keeping private notebooks has helped me come to terms with many issues which are not worth discussing with family members, such as my rejection of particular religious ideas. It doesn't make sense to argue about such things, but I think it was important for me to be able to express my doubts in the privacy of my diaries without being harrassed or raising my blood pressure.
I tend to ramble here, so I am keeping it short as possible.
The important thing is to become your own confidant. This is where you will be able to discover that you may not be as miserable as you think you are (or how miserable others think you are). You may discover just how much you resent rushing out the door to report to your employer, making a quick note, such as, "It's 6AM and I have to leave in 10 minutes. How I wish I could crack open the math book!"
Of course, when you do not have access to an actual notebook to jot your thoughts, just practicing this ritual may trigger an unwritten diary which you carry around in your heart and mind at all times, where you keep track of your inner observations. You may develop what the ancients may have considered to be their "spirit guide," and this spirit guide is your own connection to reality.