Covid sparks spike in journal writing
Covid has seen the practice of keeping a journal make a comeback.
The practice of writing journals has made a comeback, even if it involves that naff term “journaling”. Many of us have been scribbling daily notes or filling diaries through the past 18 months of horror and uncertainty. But in our era of instant mass communication, it’s not just putting pen to paper. It can be diarising our lives on social media posts or sharing thoughts via group chats. Sydney-based international tourism industry executive Parris Fotias began penning his thoughts in Dear Diary form at the outset of Covid in early 2020.
Until then, he’d travelled around the Asia-Pacific region on business appointments for at least one week a month and sometimes two. Now he was at home with his wife and daughter, pondering the minutiae of domesticity, watching too much TV, obsessing over his beloved Manchester United, trying to avoid “lockdown fads” and hoping to become a better version of himself, even if only attaining black belt status as a Zoom meetings master. Fotias shared such updates with friends and colleagues in emails and found an audience who felt similar frustrations at being grounded and wanted to feel more connected.
His Adventures through Covid gathers up these emails with plentiful reminiscences about his 25 years (so far) in the business and entertaining stories along the way. It’s an insight into the plight of the habitual traveller, and it’s not all flights of fun and fancy, despite meeting the likes of Jennifer Garner, Diane Keaton and Victoria Beckham at posh hotels and driving along California Highway 1 in a convertible with the top down and the wind in his (imaginary) hair. There’s a nice self-deprecatory tone to the anecdotes, a swag of on-the-road insider tips, and plenty of reference points for us all in the Covid essays. A stream of consciousness approach provides much amusement. A long-awaited reservation for a table at feted French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley, for example, is replaced by a trip around his home laundry, encountering mountains of washing as mystical as the Matterhorn. With remarkable timing, my copy purchased online was delivered just as Greater Sydney’s 5km-radius lockdown started and my post office box became a hill too far. Fotias has subtitled the book: The art of subconscious travel in a transcendental state. I guess we can anticipate a sequel.