Field note: adapted from a Korean diary entry published on 11 October 2024, in the fourth month. It is one of the shortest things I have ever posted — four lines and three photographs. I have kept it short here too. A couple of lines about my own health have been left out; they were private, and nothing else depends on them.
Most of what I republish from that year has a shape. A hundred-day table, a fair, a hospital stay. This one has none. Nothing happened, nothing was decided, nothing was reviewed — and that is exactly what the fourth month was, so here it is with the annotations I could not have written at the time.
"It has only just turned cool, and a third of October is already gone"
That was the first line, written as a small complaint and then abandoned mid-thought.
By that point I had been a parent for around a hundred and thirty days and could not account for where any of them had gone. The sentence in the original is simply that every day had been too busy to notice passing.
"I am writing it down in a blog and a diary"
Both at once, which now reads as slightly frantic. The stated reason was that she was changing too quickly and I was trying to hold on to it. The line after that admitted I had not expected to feel wistful about every single day.
The reason I wrote down at the time was simple: she was changing too quickly, and I wanted something that could hold on to the days.
Which is why an entry with nothing in it is not the record failing. It is the record working.
"While the weather is good, I want to take her out and show her things"
There is something faintly absurd about that ambition aimed at a four-month-old, and I think I knew it as I typed it. She was not going to remember an October park.
She was not going to remember the park, but going outside while the weather held made the day feel different for both of us. That was enough.
"Let's go, me"
The entry ends by cheering myself on. In Korean it is one word, the kind people shout at each other, and I aimed it at nobody but myself.
Two years later I would not add anything. The fourth month did not need a conclusion. It needed to be got through, and then written down in four lines so that somebody could confirm later that it happened.
Sources checked
Last reviewed August 29, 2026.
- Original Korean diary entry – an ordinary week in October — Banggujin Naver Blog
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