I Do Not Keep a Diary | Will Rees
I do not keep a diary although I plan to start doing so any day now.
我不写日记，尽管我计划现在就开始写日记。
Every preparation is in place and it only remains for me to begin.
一切准备工作都已就绪，只等我开始了。
Everywhere I go I carry a pencil, or a pen, and a small black notebook in readiness for the day that I become a committed diarist.
无论我走到哪里，我都会带着一支铅笔，或者一支钢笔，还有一个黑色小笔记本，为我成为一名忠实的日记作家的那一天做好准备。
The pen, which is sometimes a pencil, is cheap and ordinary — I am not superstitious about these things.
钢笔，有时是铅笔，既便宜又普通——我不迷信这些东西。
The notebook is blank.
笔记本上一片空白。
It isn’t one of those that has the day of the week printed at the top of the page or else the seven days of an entire week running down its left-hand side.
它不是那种在页面顶部打印一周中的某一天，或者在其左侧打印一整周的 7 天的软件。
Those are for recording things that one plans to do whereas my diary will be for recording things that I have already done (even if, at present, many of these events have not occurred yet and the entire enterprise of diarizing currently remains a plan).
这些是用来记录一个人计划做的事情，而我的日记将用来记录我已经做过的事情（即使目前，其中许多事件还没有发生，整个日记事业目前仍然是一个计划）。
Back when I worked in an office someone would occasionally ask me what I did on the weekend, and every mental trace of those possibly eventful days having vanished, I would say “Oh, not much.” My diary will be a way of storing up the past, of making it accessible to the present.
当我在办公室工作时，偶尔有人会问我周末做了什么，那些可能多事的日子的所有精神痕迹都消失了，我会说“哦，没什么。”我的日记将成为一种储存过去、让现在可以理解的方式。
When I start keeping a diary I will write solely for myself.
当我开始写日记时，我只会为自己写。
Paying no heed to quality, I will keep a simple daily record of what I have seen, heard, read, felt, and thought.
不讲究质量，每天简单记录自己的所见、所闻、所读、所感、所想。
My diary will give my life shape and coherence, or perhaps it will reveal that it already has these.
我的日记将赋予我的生活形状和连贯性，或者也许它会揭示它已经拥有这些。
In the years ahead I expect that my diary will become even more valuable, and as I prepare to start writing it I find myself anticipating just how interesting my life will appear when, decades from now, I read about it.
在未来的几年里，我预计我的日记将变得更加有价值，当我准备开始写日记时，我发现自己预计，几十年后，当我读到它时，我的生活将变得多么有趣。
Call it research, perhaps, but recently I have started reading the diaries of others.
也许可以称之为研究，但最近我开始阅读别人的日记。
I mean those that have been published as books — I haven’t been invading anybody’s privacy or have only been doing so within the parameters of social acceptability.
我指的是那些以书籍形式出版的书籍——我没有侵犯任何人的隐私，或者只是在社会可接受的范围内这样做。
I prefer diaries that are artless and written without design, perfectly unselfconscious.
我更喜欢那些朴实无华、毫无设计、完全不自觉的日记。
This is how my own will be.
我自己的也会是这样。
My favorite moments in any writer’s diary are those when they break the flow in order to note down something entirely for themselves: a shopping list or a to-do list, lists of words learned, books read, films watched (or in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, a detailed breakdown of exactly which nasty little boy owed him what for his cotton cloak, shirt, and socks).
在任何作家的日记中，我最喜欢的时刻是他们打破流程，完全为自己记下一些东西：购物清单或待办事项清单，学到的单词清单，阅读的书籍，观看的电影（或者以达芬奇为例，详细列出哪个讨厌的小男孩欠他的棉斗篷、衬衫和袜子）。
These moments pierce me: more so than any narrative, they have the power to restore an entire world and to make time’s arrow resemble a question mark.
这些时刻刺痛了我：它们比任何叙述都更具有恢复整个世界并使时间之箭像问号的力量。
In the best diaries the absences are as meaningful as what is written — no, they are more meaningful.
在最好的日记中，缺席和所写的一样有意义——不，它们更有意义。
In Kafka’s diary, which is the apogee of the form — the standard against which all others must be judged — the writer’s fastidious diarizing ends abruptly on September 25, 1912, only two days after he had rejoiced in that same oilskin notebook “How everything can be said.” It recommences, patchily, on February 11, but it is only on May 2 that the prodigal diarist can truly be said to have returned (“It has become very necessary to keep a diary again”).
在卡夫卡的日记中，这是这种形式的顶峰——所有其他日记都必须根据它来评判——作者一丝不苟的日记在1912年9月25日突然结束，就在他在同一本油皮笔记本上欣喜若狂的两天后“一切都可以说”。 2月11日，它断断续续地重新开始，但直到5月2日，浪子日记作者才算真正回来了（“重新写日记变得非常有必要了”）。
This silence, it speaks to us.
这种沉默，它在对我们说话。
It is one of the most tantalizing moments in Kafka’s diaries, in part because we know that it coincided with the busiest period of his life, a period during which he composed “The Metamorphosis” and initiated a long, unhappy correspondence with Felice Bauer, quickly eliciting the woman’s love, another literary accomplishment.
这是卡夫卡日记中最诱人的时刻之一，部分原因是我们知道，这恰逢他一生中最忙碌的时期，在此期间，他创作了《变形记》，并与菲利斯·鲍尔开始了漫长而不愉快的通信，很快就引起了这位女士的爱情，这是另一项文学成就。
Freud once wrote of how the diaries of “mortals often skim over the most important events of the day with only a few words or ignore them altogether.” A diary that cannot keep pace with life is its own sort of statement, but unfortunately it isn’t enough simply not to keep a diary.
弗洛伊德曾经写道，“凡人的日记常常只用几句话就略过一天中最重要的事件，或者完全忽略它们”。跟不上生活节奏的日记本身就是一种说法，但不幸的是，仅仅不写日记是不够的。
Quite the opposite, in fact, since it is only against the background of his prodigious diarizing that Kafka’s silences hold any meaning at all.
事实上，恰恰相反，因为只有在他惊人的日记背景下，卡夫卡的沉默才有意义。
What’s more, in the case of Kafka we have other documents — letters, biographies, and of course his fictions — that enable us to fill in the gaps, and this transforms those gaps from plain absences into aching reticences.
更重要的是，就卡夫卡而言，我们还有其他文献——信件、传记，当然还有他的小说——使我们能够填补空白，这将这些空白从简单的缺席转变为痛苦的沉默。
Of course, these diaries should not exist at all: Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod to burn all his papers, and this fact undoubtedly, if dubiously, adds excitement to the experience of reading them, giving it a frisson of the illicit.
当然，这些日记根本不应该存在：卡夫卡指示他的朋友马克斯·布罗德烧掉他所有的文件，这一事实无疑（尽管有些可疑）增加了阅读日记的兴奋感，给人一种非法的颤栗感。
Rereading Kafka’s diaries last year gave me a pleasure that felt a little bit indecent, and I pledged that when I begin to keep my own diary, I will do so with sufficient commitment that my silences, too, will reverberate.
去年重读卡夫卡的日记给了我一种感觉有点不雅的乐趣，我发誓当我开始写自己的日记时，我会做出足够的承诺，让我的沉默也会产生回响。
In his celebrated essay “E Unibus Pluram,” David Foster Wallace pointed out the artifice and performance involved in any seemingly authentic televised presentation of self — a paradox embedded in the oxymoronic injunction to “act natural.” In the thirty years since Wallace wrote his essay, video cameras have become ubiquitous, virtually never out of reach, and the ones that are embedded in laptops and smartphones are now the most common way of chronicling daily life: a form of diarizing, or a replacement for it.
大卫·福斯特·华莱士（David Foster Wallace）在他的著名文章《E Unibus Pluram》中指出，任何看似真实的电视自我呈现都涉及技巧和表演——这是“表现自然”的矛盾指令中嵌入的一个悖论。自华莱士撰写论文以来的三十年里，摄像机已经变得无处不在，几乎从未遥不可及，而嵌入笔记本电脑和智能手机中的摄像机现在已成为记录日常生活的最常见方式：一种日记形式，或者是日记的替代品。
I personally am not a born performer — am a little shy, in the idiom of contemporary pseudoscience, an introvert — but when necessary can generally perform as is required of me.
我个人并不是一个天生的表演者——用当代伪科学的说法，我有点害羞，是一个内向的人——但在必要的时候通常可以按照我的要求进行表演。
Still, as soon as I realize that I am being recorded there is one thing that I am wholly incapable of being, and that, needless to say, is my “self.”
然而，一旦我意识到我正在被记录，就有一件事是我完全无法存在的，不用说，那就是我的“自我”。
But the power to effect such undoings is not the unique privilege of the camera lens.
但造成这种破坏的力量并不是相机镜头所独有的。
For centuries writers have contended with the artificial nature of what is captured by the recording devices at their disposal — not unlike how twentieth-century physicists discovered that light oscillates between wave and particle depending on how it is being recorded.
几个世纪以来，作家们一直在与他们所掌握的记录设备所捕捉到的东西的人工性质作斗争——这与二十世纪的物理学家发现光在波和粒子之间振荡取决于它的记录方式没有什么不同。
In Augustan London, keeping a diary became an obligatory pastime for the well-heeled litterateur, with Joseph Addison celebrating the way this practice could transform one into a spectator of oneself.
在奥古斯坦伦敦，写日记成为富有的文学家的一项必备消遣，约瑟夫·艾迪生（Joseph Addison）称赞这种做法可以将一个人变成自己的旁观者。
In reality, however, what begins as voyeurism can quickly edge into exhibitionism.
然而实际上，一开始的偷窥癖很快就会演变成暴露癖。
In the celebrated biographer James Boswell’s first diary entry, written on arrival to the capital in November 1762, he expressed the wishful belief that the practice of keeping a diary would make him a better person, since “knowing that I am to record my transactions will make me more careful to do well.” However, a friend later pointed out that Boswell’s diary seemed to have the reverse effect on his behavior, since it encouraged him to “hunt about for adventures to adorn it with.” Call it the observer effect: oscillating between saintliness and rakishness, Boswell, when placed under his own gaze, was incapable of acting naturally.
著名传记作家詹姆斯·博斯韦尔 (James Boswell) 在 1762 年 11 月抵达首都时写下的第一篇日记中，表达了他一厢情愿的信念，即写日记会让他成为一个更好的人，因为“知道我要记录我的交易将使我更加小心地做好事”。然而，一位朋友后来指出，博斯韦尔的日记似乎对他的行为产生了相反的影响，因为它鼓励他“寻找冒险来装饰它”。我们可以称之为观察者效应：博斯韦尔在圣洁与潇洒之间摇摆不定，当他置于自己的注视之下时，他无法自然地行动。
For many writers, the diary is a place where they self-consciously style themselves into writers, and this includes writers whom it would be impossible, now, to view as anything but writers.
对于许多作家来说，日记是他们自觉地将自己塑造成作家的地方，其中包括那些现在不可能被视为除了作家之外的作家。
The critic Brian Dillon has suggested that to read Susan Sontag’s diaries from her days as a graduate student is to witness her first essays in her life-long, never-finished task of becoming Susan Sontag.
评论家布莱恩·狄龙建议，阅读苏珊·桑塔格研究生时期的日记，就是见证她为成为苏珊·桑塔格而终生未完成的任务中的第一篇论文。
At the age of twenty-four Sontag wrote, “In the journal I do not express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.” She went on to call her diary “a vehicle for my sense of selfhood,” though I prefer the earlier formulation, which, a little more faltering, better expresses the knot of freedom and unfreedom in every attempt to write about oneself.
桑塔格二十四岁时写道：“在日记中，我不会比对任何人更公开地表达自己；我创造自己。”她接着称她的日记为“我自我意识的载体”，尽管我更喜欢早期的表述，这种表述稍微有些犹豫，但更好地表达了每次尝试写自己时自由与不自由的结。
In a diary one is condemned to be free.
在日记中，一个人被注定是自由的。
One cannot simply perspire one’s self onto the page.
一个人不能简单地把自己的汗水写在纸上。
There is no getting away from the business of choosing what to say and how to say it, and with this creative freedom comes the potentially paralyzing suspicion that for all one’s candor one is forever being a little bit dishonest: confecting, dissembling, or simply missing the mark.
选择说什么和如何说是不可避免的，随着这种创造性的自由，人们可能会产生一种令人麻痹的怀疑，即尽管一个人很坦率，但他永远都有点不诚实：捏造、掩饰，或者只是错过了目标。
“Deceit and mystification not only are inevitable but constitute the writer’s honesty,” wrote Maurice Blanchot in “Literature and the Right to Death,” which may or may not be consoling as one sits down to write one’s daily autofiction.
莫里斯·布朗肖（Maurice Blanchot）在《文学与死亡的权利》中写道：“欺骗和神秘不仅是不可避免的，而且构成了作家的诚实。”当一个人坐下来写自己的日常自传小说时，这可能会或可能不会让人感到安慰。
In a letter to her aunt, the diarist Alice James apologized after telling a few too many self-aggrandizing tales, before reflecting that, on second thought, there was no getting around artifice.
日记作者爱丽丝·詹姆斯在写给姨妈的一封信中，在讲述了太多自我夸大的故事后表示歉意，但转念一想，这是没有办法避免的。
Better, then, to have a little fun: “I have to be my own Boswell and it would be a pity for you to lose a little local color by artificial bashfulness in me.” Freud meanwhile was disturbed to find that his case studies always resembled literature, although he comforted himself “with the reflection that the nature of the subject is evidently responsible for this.” Of course questions of deceit and artifice are not surprising when it comes to our exchanges with and about other people, but what about when one is writing for oneself?
那么，最好是找点乐子：“我必须成为我自己的博斯韦尔，如果你因我人为的害羞而失去一点地方色彩，那就太遗憾了。”与此同时，弗洛伊德不安地发现他的案例研究总是与文学相似，尽管他安慰自己“反思主题的本质显然是造成这种情况的原因”。当然，当涉及到我们与他人的交流以及关于他人的交流时，欺骗和诡计的问题并不奇怪，但是当一个人为自己写作时呢？
When, free of any literary ambitions, one intends to be one’s own Boswell and one’s only reader?
什么时候，一个人没有任何文学野心，打算成为自己的博斯韦尔和唯一的读者？
I wonder if it was a desire to evade these questions that led Boswell himself, in an essay on his diary, to dream of an “invention for getting an immediate and exact transcript of the mind.” Yet a diary is not like a pocketed leaf of paper smudged with one’s fingerprints: like every display of self, it is subject to the decisions and distortions of presentation.
我想知道，是否正是出于逃避这些问题的愿望，博斯韦尔本人在一篇关于他的日记的文章中梦想着“能够立即准确地记录心灵的发明”。然而，日记并不像一张装在口袋里、沾满指纹的纸页：就像每一次自我展示一样，它也会受到呈现的决定和扭曲的影响。
In the case of a diary that is solely for one’s private perusal, the question is not, “Who am I really when no one is looking?” but a more profound and also troubling question: “How would I like to appear when it is only myself who is looking?”
对于一本仅供私人阅读的日记来说，问题不在于“没人看的时候我到底是谁？”但还有一个更深刻、也更令人不安的问题：“当只有我自己在看时，我希望以什么方式出现？”
Boswell stated that “a man should not live more than he can record.” I sympathize with this point of view although I personally would not like to live less — or, to be perfectly honest, write more.
博斯韦尔说：“一个人的生活不应超出他所能记录的范围。”我同情这个观点，尽管我个人并不想减少生活——或者，说实话，写更多。
It is no easy thing, keeping a regular diary.
定期写日记并不是一件容易的事。
That said, it could just be that I am temperamentally ill-suited to it seeing as many people do, of course, manage.
也就是说，这可能只是因为我的性格不适合它，当然，正如许多人所做的那样。
Or it could be that I am destined to be a person who is forever about to start keeping a diary, since for some people there are certain initiatives, such as emigrating or committing suicide, that structure and direct their existence precisely insofar as they remain unfulfilled.
或者，我注定是一个永远要开始写日记的人，因为对于某些人来说，有某些主动行动，例如移民或自杀，正是在这些主动行动尚未实现的情况下，结构和指导了他们的存在。
I suppose that I am wishing, or waiting, for the moment when it has “become very necessary to keep a diary.” But it always remains possible not to.
我想我正在希望或等待“写日记变得非常必要”的那一刻。但不这样做总是有可能的。
This is called freedom, its advantages are well documented, yet I have sometimes wondered whether I might prefer not to be free, to be compelled, as Kafka once wrote of himself, by an inner necessity (so long as the terms were agreeable).
这就是所谓的自由，它的优点是有据可查的，但我有时想知道，我是否宁愿不自由，也不喜欢被内在的必然性所强迫（正如卡夫卡曾经写道的那样）（只要条件令人满意）。
Another issue I keep confronting is that, at those times when my life is enjoyable, as it sometimes is, I can never make it a priority to write about it.
我一直面临的另一个问题是，当我的生活很愉快的时候（有时确实如此），我永远不能把写它作为优先事项。
Often the thought does occur, but generally as I am dropping off to sleep, and at such moments I long for an invisible biographer who would record my satisfying and interesting existence.
这种想法经常确实会出现，但通常是在我快要入睡的时候，在这种时刻，我渴望有一位看不见的传记作家来记录我令人满意和有趣的存在。
On the other hand, when I am downhearted and there is little going on — the two almost always coming together, although which is cause and which effect is anything but obvious — I become restive and lack the inclination or imagination to use this surplus of time to reflect on my experience, and, what is more, would not want to give the impression of a life lived entirely in the doldrums.
另一方面，当我心灰意冷、没什么事情发生时——两者几乎总是在一起，尽管因果关系并不明显——我就会变得焦躁不安，缺乏意愿或想象力来利用这段多余的时间来反思我的经历，更重要的是，不想给人一种生活完全低迷的印象。
It could be that I should learn to enjoy these fallow periods, perhaps actively cultivate them, and not immediately absorb them into a narrative of defeat.
也许我应该学会享受这些闲暇时光，也许积极地培养它们，而不是立即将它们吸收到失败的叙述中。
This is a state of mind that I believe meditation will instill in me, and this is something else that I intend to start practicing very soon.
我相信冥想会灌输给我这种心态，这也是我打算很快开始练习的其他东西。
I should say something more about the notebook itself.
我应该多说一些关于笔记本本身的事情。
This black notebook that I have carried everywhere with me for several years is a paperback octavo, it has about a hundred pages, one hundred and twenty at most, and when it becomes my diary these pages will be darkened with the closely spaced details of my life.
我随身带着的这本黑色笔记本好几年了，是一本平装八开本，大约有一百页，最多一百二十页，当它成为我的日记时，这些页面会因我生活中的紧密细节而变暗。
The notebook has rounded edges and stitched binding and (I am oddly reluctant to say) is manufactured by the company Moleskine.
该笔记本具有圆形边缘和缝合装订，（奇怪的是我不愿意说）是由 Moleskine 公司制造的。
Already this notebook has accompanied me to many places, and, because I am not careful with my belongings, its cover is showing signs of usage that belie the pristine blankness inside.
这本笔记本已经陪伴我去了很多地方，而且，由于我不小心保管自己的物品，它的封面上有使用过的痕迹，掩盖了里面原始的空白。
When it sits, as it sometimes does, on a tabletop beside me, any passerby would be forgiven for presuming that I am already the committed diarist that I one day hope to be, and I admit the impression pleases me.
当它像有时那样坐在我旁边的桌面上时，任何路人都会认为我已经成为我有一天希望成为的忠实日记作者，而且我承认这种印象让我很高兴。
Would I be getting ahead of myself were I to say that lately I have been given to dreaming about the day when, after many years of it having been lost, I find my diary?
如果我说最近我一直梦想着有一天，在丢失了多年之后，我能找到我的日记，我会不会太过分了？
What a miraculous discovery this will be!
这将是一个多么神奇的发现啊！
So far, I have been speaking about my notebook as if it were a single object.
到目前为止，我一直在谈论我的笔记本，就好像它是一个单一的物体一样。
This is a purely sentimental device, but the truth is that I have had many of these notebooks, countless of them.
这纯粹是一个感伤的装置，但事实是我有很多这样的笔记本，无数。
There was even a time in my life when I considered it a problem (never my most serious one), this surfeit of elegant, stitch-bound notebooks.
在我的一生中，甚至有一段时间我认为这是一个问题（这从来不是我最严重的问题），即过多的优雅的、缝合的笔记本。
I will tell you how that situation arose.
我会告诉你这种情况是如何发生的。
Seeing that I was forever carrying one about with me, my mother — who between the months of January and December single-mindedly applies herself to the task of finding suitable Christmas presents for each member of the family, and around whom one must for the duration of this period be very careful to avoid displaying any preferences — deduced that I must be speeding through these notebooks.
看到我总是随身带着一本，我的母亲——从一月到十二月，她一心一意地为每个家庭成员寻找合适的圣诞礼物，在这段时间里，在她身边的人必须非常小心，避免表现出任何偏好——推断出我一定是在快速浏览这些笔记本。
That Christmas, I received six.
那年圣诞节，我收到了六个。
The following Christmas, six again.
接下来的圣诞节，又是六点。
(I think the notebooks come in threes.) This continued for several years.
（我认为笔记本是三份的。）这种情况持续了好几年。
The notebooks piled up.
笔记本堆积如山。
I don’t know if it is because they were identical or for some other reason, but somehow I came to always have multiple notebooks in simultaneous use.
我不知道是因为它们相同还是出于其他原因，但不知何故，我总是同时使用多个笔记本。
I would take one out with me (my new diary) and record some little thought.
我会随身携带一本（我的新日记）并记录一些小小的想法。
Oftentimes I would note down an observation with a view to saving it for the time, now fast approaching, when I begin writing fiction.
我常常记下观察结果，以便在即将开始写小说的时候保存下来。
Then a few days later, or more likely a few months, I would withdraw the notebook once more from my rucksack so as to record another thought.
然后几天后，或者更可能是几个月后，我会再次从背包中取出笔记本，以记录另一个想法。
To my astonishment it would be blank.
令我惊讶的是，它会是空白的。
I’d have brought the wrong one.
我带错了。
This left me in a dilemma.
这让我陷入了两难的境地。
Should I start a fresh notebook?
我应该开始一个新的笔记本吗？
Or risk losing the new thought?
或者冒着失去新想法的风险？
Here I was in possession of a thought, a pen, and a notebook — and yet I hesitated.
在这里，我拥有一个想法、一支笔和一个笔记本——但我犹豫了。
It wasn’t the extravagance that prevented me.
并不是奢侈阻碍了我。
It was the unsystematic nature of the thing, the way it would fail to bring any order to my scattered thoughts.
这就是这件事的非系统性，它无法让我分散的思绪变得有条理。
Let’s say that I noted down this new thought, which amid this fitful decision making was already growing hazy, and which I could now at best hope to intimate, then I would essentially be consigning that earlier thought to oblivion since I would be starting my diary afresh without it and, when I got home, would be without any other option: I would have to find that earlier diary and tear out its first page.
假设我记下了这个新的想法，在这个断断续续的决策过程中，它已经变得越来越模糊，而我现在最多只能希望将其表达出来，那么我基本上就会把之前的想法抛诸脑后，因为如果没有它，我将重新开始我的日记，当我回到家时，将没有任何其他选择：我将不得不找到之前的日记并撕掉它的第一页。
But was this new thought worth all that?
但这个新想法值得这一切吗？
Was it so important?
有那么重要吗？
So profound?
这么深奥？
Needless to say these kinds of calculations rendered hopeless my desire to capture in words the incandescent thoughts that flickered through my mind, and as I write this today I am saddened to think of just how much has been lost to these prudent judgments, while knowing that if this situation were to arise today, it would not be any different.
不用说，这些计算使我无法用语言捕捉脑海中闪现的炽热想法，当我今天写下这篇文章时，我很难过地想到这些谨慎的判断造成了多少损失，同时知道如果今天出现这种情况，情况也不会有任何不同。
I know it would be possible to note a thought down somewhere else and then transfer it into my nascent diary afterward, something that Boswell did often.
我知道可以在其他地方记下一个想法，然后将其转移到我刚刚写的日记中，博斯韦尔经常这样做。
But this strikes me as forgery, which is not to say I never do it.
但这让我觉得这是伪造的，但这并不是说我从来没有这样做过。
What I tend to do is write the thought down on a scrap of paper, or more likely on my phone, and then promise myself that as soon as I get home I will transcribe it into my notebook.
我倾向于做的就是把想法写在一张纸上，或者更可能写在手机上，然后向自己保证，一回到家我就会把它抄到我的笔记本上。
If I could do this on the same day then the imposture would be negligible, basically nonexistent, but unfortunately this rarely does prove possible.
如果我能在同一天做到这一点，那么冒充行为就可以忽略不计，基本上不存在，但不幸的是，这很少被证明是可能的。
Generally what happens is that some time later I sit down to transcribe the thought into the correct notebook only to find that the notepad app on my phone is full of earlier untranscribed thoughts.
一般来说，一段时间后，我坐下来将想法转录到正确的笔记本中，却发现手机上的记事本应用程序充满了早期未转录的想法。
These are frequently in abbreviated form — typed quickly in the belief that I would reconstruct them later that day — so that, while I know that only a few weeks ago they were important enough to hold onto, they already they come close to signifying nothing.
这些通常都是缩写形式——快速输入，因为我相信我会在当天晚些时候重新构建它们——因此，虽然我知道就在几周前它们还足够重要，值得保留，但它们已经几乎没有任何意义了。
On several occasions I have decided to start afresh, only to open a new notebook and discover yet another record of my abortive attempts at diarizing.
有好几次，我决定重新开始，结果打开一本新笔记本，却发现了我失败的日记记录的又一记录。
The effect is discouraging, like a skeleton seen in a maze, and such discoveries tend to destroy my renewed determination to begin.
其效果令人沮丧，就像在迷宫中看到的骷髅一样，这样的发现往往会破坏我重新开始的决心。
If what I have wanted is to bring order and narrative coherence to an existence that often feels muddled, then I am forced to confess that, in my attempts until now, I have failed.
如果我想要的是给一个经常感到混乱的存在带来秩序和叙事连贯性，那么我不得不承认，到目前为止我的尝试都失败了。
But here is the strangest, and possibly the saddest, thing about my long and so far unsuccessful attempts to keep a diary: although I can say with complete certainty that I have never disposed of a notebook, as I write this today, on August 27, 2022, with my current, slightly torn black notebook on the table beside me, I have absolutely no idea where its predecessors have got to, nor what they contained, and when I turn my mind to this, as I repeatedly do, the feeling of loss is immeasurable.
但是，关于我长期且迄今为止不成功的写日记的尝试，最奇怪、也可能是最悲伤的事情是：尽管我可以完全肯定地说，我从未处理过笔记本，但当我今天（2022 年 8 月 27 日）写下这篇文章时，我旁边的桌子上放着我现在的、稍微撕破的黑色笔记本，我完全不知道它的前身去了哪里，也不知道它们包含了什么，当我像我反复做的那样，这种感觉的损失是不可估量的。