💬 Found my diary from my first year in Riyadh and I barely recognised the guy

Cleaning the cupboard last weekend I found a small diary from 2016, my first year in Riyadh. I'd forgotten I ever kept one. Blue cover, Saudi Post logo, half the pages empty. The entries were short. Most were 3 or 4 lines written at night after work. A few were just a date and nothing. I sat on the floor and read the whole thing in 1 go. Took about 20 minutes. That guy was scared of everything. Scared of the manager, scared of the rent, scared of calling home and crying. 1 entry just says, sent 1,500 riyals home, 200 left for the month, don't tell mother. Another one says, I think everyone at work can tell I don't understand Arabic. I'll learn. I have to. And on my birthday, just: no one called till 11 pm. Then everyone called. I did learn the Arabic, by the way. Enough to argue with customers in Batha by 2018. The rent stopped being scary. My family came over in 2019. Then I came back home for good. None of that was in the diary, obviously. The diary stops in October 2016. I think I just got busy. But reading it, I wanted to tell that guy it works out. Not perfectly, but it works out. My wife read it after me. She laughed at the spelling and then went quiet at the birthday one. Anyone else keep a diary from a hard year? Did you read it back, and how did it feel? I'm thinking of starting one again. Not because things are hard. Just so 2036 me has something to read. Probably won't last past December. That's how the last one went.

A diary with entries of 3 or 4 lines that sometimes only had a date is more honest than most memoirs. I found my first year hostel notes from 2015 and read them on a train. The guy in them was so careful with money that he counted samosas. Did you keep the diary, or put it back in the cupboard? I think I would keep it.

The birthday one would have finished me. I don't have a diary, but I have old emails to my brother from 2014. Reading them last year was strange. I sounded so sure about things I was completely wrong about. I'd written that I'd never leave that job, not in a million years.