Alanna Thornton’s Reviews > Ongoingness: The End of a Diary > Status Update

Often I believe I'm working toward a result, but always, once I reach the result, I realize all the pleasure was in planning and executing the path to that result.
It comforts me that endings are thus formally unappealing to me—that more than beginning or ending, I enjoy continuing.

Marriage isn't a fixed experience. It's a continuous one.
It changes form but is still always there, a rivulet under a frozen stream. Now, when I feel a break in the continuity of till death do us part, I think to myself, Get back in the river.

In my diary I recorded what had changed since the previous day, but sometimes I wondered: What if I recorded only what hadn't changed? Weather still fair. Cat still sweet.
Cook oats in same pot. Continue reading same book. Make bed in same way, put on same blue jeans, water garden in same order.... Would that be a better, truer record?

I could have protected the document with a password or padlocked or hidden the computer, but I didn't care enough to inconvenience myself. The diary wasn't a trove of secrets; it was, simply, everything. I might as well have hidden myself from view. I still don't care whether anyone reads it.