I wish I had started keeping little records of ordinary life earlier.

”Can I ask you something?”
What’s one thing you wish you’d started doing sooner?

I’ve been thinking about this. A lot. And there are plenty of sensible answers.

Saving money, exercising regularly, learning another language, wearing sunscreen every single day. All are excellent. My future self would probably like a word with me about several of them… But, I think my answer is much smaller.

I wish I’d started keeping little records of my ordinary days.

Not a serious diary. I’ve tried those and it did not work out well. I definitely do not need another daily obligation. What I wish I’d done instead was simply write things down whenever they felt worth keeping. The little things, because it’s strange what we remember. And stranger still what we forget. I can remember holidays from years ago. But not what an ordinary Saturday felt like when I was 20. I remember birthdays, but not the conversations around the kitchen table on completely unimportant Tuesdays. I remember taking photographs on special occasions, but I don’t have many photographs of the rooms I once spent every day in.

And at the time, none of that seemed worth recording. Why would it? It was ordinary. There would be another Saturday. Another coffee. Another family lunch, another summer, another evening sitting outside talking about absolutely nothing.

Until, eventually… there wasn’t. Not because something terrible happened. No. Life simply moved on. Homes changed, people changed, friendships changed. I changed.

And those ordinary days quietly became a part of my past without evening announcing that they were leaving. That’s the funny thing about nostalgia.

We think we’ll miss the extraordinary moments. Sometimes we do. But occasionally what we really want back is something small. Ridiculously small. The sound of a particular person’s laugh. The mug we always used. A song playing from another room. The way the house looked in the afternoon light. An inside joke we’ve forgotten. The cafe where someone already knew our order. Things nobody would think to photograph.

These days, I understand it differently. I don’t think documenting life means photographing every second of it. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s just one sentence. ”Charlie fell asleep with his head on my foot, today”. ”The sea was completely still this morning”. ”I bought another mug. I have no regrets”.

Nothing significant happened. Nobody needs to publish these records in a hundred years. But someday, I might want them. Because memory is a funny editor and it keeps some things beautifully. Others disappear.

I used to think memories were made from life’s biggest occasions. Now, I am not so sure.

Perhaps, a life is mostly made from thousands of ordinary moments and every now and then, years later, one of them becomes precious.

Not because we knew it was special while it was happening. But because we didn’t. So that’s what I wish I’d started earlier. Not journaling every day. Not documenting everything. Just occasionally noticing a moment and thinking: I’d like to remember this.

And writing it down.