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Journaling the lockdown

Lockdown Diaries 3web

While diaries can be intensely private, one shared project aims to bring people together by reflecting on what we are all going through

 

Ah the diary, a teenager’s most trusted friend. Remember those days in our youth we would scribble down our thoughts into a notebook? Keeping a journal, even in adulthood, is more than just releasing your secrets and writing about your day – though that is rather liberating as well. It can also create a strong sense of self-awareness, an act of looking within and understanding whatever it is you are going through, and there are certainly a lot of things to digest these days. To help with processing the experience of the past year one local initiative has launched a digital collective journal where anyone can share their thoughts.

The Lockdown Diaries 2021 was created by Social Designer, Filmmaker and Alternative Educator Andriana Lagoudes yet its author is, well, you. The journal is a space for people to express whatever they wish, be it fears, hope, poems, text or imagery. It is a documentation of what lockdown, isolation and the pandemic have been like, recording history on the go. Authors log their entry, anonymously or not, and join the conversation.

Lockdown Diaries“It’s an open-source document,” says Andriana, “go in, write whatever you need.” Seeing as this is the second time Andriana has launched the Lockdown Diaries, it seems that many people have things to share and experiences to process. The first edition of the project was born during the first lockdown back in March 2020. Creating it wasn’t really out of inspiration she says but out of necessity.

“When everything started happening,” recalled Andriana, “the amount of grief and shock that everyone was going through really made me think… As I was battling my own relationship to my productivity at a point in time where I was so overwhelmed, I knew I had a couple of ways to cope because of my creative training and I knew that one of them was journaling. Journaling helps me process really difficult things. It doesn’t solve them but it helps me see them so then I know where I’m moving from. One day I just woke up and knew this journal needed to happen.”

So, the first Lockdown Diaries took flesh and bone during a time when the words ‘coronavirus’ and ‘unprecedented times’ were still fresh to our ears. The entries then were raw and authentic as Andriana described, even if they didn’t make sense because nothing did at the time. “I remember,” she said, “the one thing that really hit me that I saw in the first entries was just a line that someone opened the journal to write ‘I really don’t want to die’. That stuck with me.”

Now, almost a year later, we find ourselves in another lockdown with both old and new experiences to process. Noticing the desire for another collective space for expression and connection, Andriana launched the second diary series following requests. With the start of the lockdown in January, Lockdown Diaries 2021 was created, a way to serve the community and bring it together.

This latest edition of the Diaries still works in the same way. Authors can add text, illustrations, abstract pieces and even voice notes can be sent to Andriana which she transcribes onto the journal. Yet this lockdown doesn’t feel the same for many people, even if in practical terms it is. This time around we know how the text messages work and what being home feels like and this shift in our perspective also comes through in the Diaries.

“Some of the entries are really raw,” Andriana commented. “Some people have already processed a lot, some of them have already changed the direction of where their life is going because last year shook up our essence as humankind so much.

“In that,” she added, “I find a lot of hope. Even though hope is a bit of a fragile word. In seeing that people have started processing and making changes in their lives to honour their integrity more and what their soul is telling them to do. I find hope in that and I see everywhere I turn now people trying to live a better life and that gets me excited to make these people my community.”

Lockdown Diaries 2The journal acts as a tool for people to reflect on what they are going through, voice concerns and how they wish to move forward and do so collectively. In essence, that is the purpose of the journal, “to enable people in seeing that their story matters in this and only if we come together to write those stories and read through them will we know what we need to move forward”.

The previous lockdown, and perhaps the whole of last year itself, was incredibly isolating for communities that were not allowed to gather in groups, have feasts, let alone hug. The Lockdown Diaries 2021 wants to bring people closer, even via a Google Doc, to show that we are not alone and perhaps it can act as a catalyst for people to have conversations.

When the lockdown finishes it won’t be the end for the Diaries as Andriana aims at publishing the journal in some format in a way that ties it back to the community. She wants to organise an event where people can gather and share their experiences, something she says the island is in dire need of. “That’s my dream for this project, that’s my dream for Cyprus in general, to create these spaces to bring softness in our daily life.”

The Journal is still open, gathering entries of all sorts. There is no one set format as it encourages people to express themselves in whatever way they wish, as long as it’s not hate speech. “This is a playground for us. Let’s play together!” says Andriana as although each entry is independent, it collaborates with the rest of the collection.

“We need to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, to give ourselves space to rise up through the struggle and recreate what we want life to be like for us,” she shares. “And I know it’s hard, tipping the scales of a really toxic society can look like a tremendous amount of work that we are incapable of doing but we need to start from somewhere and I’m not saying that this will be it but what if it is? What if it is?”

 

Follow Andriana Lagoudes’ work on andrianalagoudes.com or her Instagram @andrianal.la. Access the Lockdown Diaries 2021 here

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