This month, Michelle Gant, Editor of Engaging Stories, looks back on a March 2020 journal entry which led to the first When The World Paused book – and invites people to take part in this year’s A Life In A Day online diary project
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
Anais Nin
Almost six years ago I started a diary. An online journal. Only this diary wasn’t secret. It had around 75 other writers. And lots of readers. Lots.
It was a diary designed to capture life during a pandemic. When The World Paused – the blog then book – began as everything shut down, and things were ‘unprecedented’. To say the least. At the time it seemed as if things would never go back to how they were.
After all we were in this ‘new normal’ (am I the only one who hated that term?!). Would we ever get back to school? To work? To see our friends and family?
Six years on, it’s hard to believe that life was so…disrupted. It’s difficult to feel again the fear and the confusion and the anxiety and, often, and for many of us, that sense of il dolce far niente as the Italian goes – the sweetness of doing nothing.
But we can travel back in time because we have our words, captured for posterity in our When the World Paused books. Recently I’ve been looking back through those pages again as the anniversary of the first journal entry – 29th March – comes round. And I am reminded once more of that recent history and the feelings and thoughts and the things that I learnt – things that can so easily be forgotten but which were once prevalent in my mind.
That’s just one of the reasons why writing things down matters. It gives us a place to revisit the past. It gives us our own piece of history. And, as Anais Nin said, it allows us to taste life in retrospect once more.
A Life in A Day
So, it’s set against this background that I wanted to set up A Life in A Day, a space for people to write about their day. Their ordinary day. Their extraordinary day. A place to connect. A space to find similarity and difference. A piece of history.
I am so grateful for all the amazing people who have shared their days so far.
And now I’m inviting you – whoever you are, wherever you are in the world, whatever matters to you, and especially if you feel like you’re not a writer (you are, honestly, it’s just putting one word in front of another) or if you think you don’t have anything to say (believe me, you do) – to join in. To take a day in our online diary.
It’s so simple to take part. You are allocated a day, and you just write about it. As little or as much as you wish to say. Whatever you want to say.
And maybe, six years from now, we’ll be looking back via the lens of a book of our own upon a collection of memories and experiences and thoughts and feelings of life in 2026.
Precious, really.
So, can we visit a day in your life?
Can we tell the story of 2026 through the viewpoint of our lives – one day at a time?
Find out more and see the fab previous entries here: A Life in A Day – Connecting us together, one day at a time. And you can sign up to by emailing me engagingstories@yahoo.com or just message me directly. (Oh, and if you fancy revisiting recent history, our books are here – and these are still raising funds for NHS Charities: When The World Paused (2 book series).
Visit A Life in A Day.
Featured image of Michelle Gant with Riley, aged 2 and a half, who will also soon be sharing a day in his life on A Life in A Day!
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