This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live. I’ve made the promise to myself so many times: I will keep a diary. I like the idea that one day, decades into the future, I can turn over the ...

Since my first day as a university student back in October 1984, I have kept a diary. What started out as my attempt to write a real-life Secret Diary of Adrian Mole has turned into 30 years of ...

From hospital stays to Shabbat dinners, a few lines a day became a Jewish way of reckoning with memory, loss — and the comfort of routine. In January 2011, I wrote my first entry in a five-year diary.

The first time I taught a college course called “The London Diary” for young Americans studying abroad back in 2002, each student ended up with a tangible book of memories, a handwritten record of ...