Our Diary
est. 2024
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not a lot, just forever
by Joyce Gan
and at some point
two strangers will walk past each other on the street
and know each others birthdays
Created on November 4, 2026
Published on November 12, 2026
It’s April, but I’m still wearing my puffer jacket. And yours is black now, not green. I know the ending of this story because I wrote it. It is messy and incoherent, but the finale is absolute. I have made up my mind, after thinking it through, knowing you will agree with me – as always – regardless of my decision. I abide by the speed limit on the way to your house. There is something dying – or already dead – It had been gnawing at the edges of our love all this time, and now it starves. Facing the consequences of one’s actions has always been direct and never pleasant. Eating and starving, living and dying – we all live at the brink of a certain inevitability. I have peered over the edge, and I am now ruled by a fear that incessantly hangs before my eyes like a veil. But he, having lived in darkness this entire time, doesn’t notice. The branches of that tree in your front yard reach toward gray skies. There is nothing budding, I realize as I pull into your driveway, and it might as well be dead. I know you will exit the house from the garage, so I will pretend to look elsewhere as you open the car door. I try not to be too friendly as you address me with a polite “Hello,” like you always do. I aim to be curt, but not rude. I know that we both know the next few hours will be difficult. I park a couple of streets down from your house so that your mom won’t see us while she walks the dog. A scent so familiar it could topple me over. A pink desk and a blue desk, back-to-back. Rough fingers dancing on ivory keys. Matching socks and repeated outfits – a kind of order that isn’t for show. The dog has stopped barking for a while and the house is gray. It’s too cold for me to take off my jacket, but he seems to be doing fine in just a sweater. My bag thuds to the ground and I struggle to put my charger into the outlet. He sits, unbothered, exactly 7 metres away from me. I struggle to get started on work. We switch to the backseat as rain starts to fall. Spring seems to be taking its time this year. Condensation builds and the windows fog up. My jacket isn’t warm enough to shield me from the accumulating cold in the unheated car, and I shiver involuntarily. I imagine you are warm as usual. I stumble through a series of thoughts that I had unsuccessfully attempted to organize a couple hours earlier. I try to say everything vital before I become too weak to continue. Even though we both know it’s over, I know that I have to be the one to say it. Those words are the first that I manage to choke out. Everything afterwards is inconsequential. I do most of the talking and you listen. A couple of hours pass, and you hug me for the last time. Your thumb runs over the back of my hand for the last time. I drive you back to your house and you take my heart with you. I nearly collapse at the wheel. The rain has stopped but the sky is still dark. I don’t tell my mom what happened. A scene plays in my head. I am thirty-five or forty. I still smile with crescent eyes, and I am still worried about my weight. Twenty years ago, I told myself I’d be dead by now. But I have made it this far running on fumes, and I am inclined to keep going. My children run around. They dig up old photographs and inevitably ask – “Who’s this guy with his arm around you?” And when I tell them that it’s someone who I used to know, the used to will burn itself into my mouth. And it won’t be blistered anymore, but I’ll have a habit of running my tongue over that spot. I don’t think of him anymore. I don’t think of his family’s confusion. I don’t think of his left hand writing. I don’t think of his scrolling gallery. I don’t think of us hugging in the backseat. I don’t think of that house with the skylights. I never think of him.
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My Universe
by April Zhang
We have many things our lives revolve around. Be it family, a hobby, or a place. They keep us going and give us a place eager to return to.
(Click to expand photo)
Created on August 13, 2026
Published on November 4, 2026
on the fortunate accident of knowing you
by Kai Oszlai
perhaps the greeks would have called it kairos
the delicate rightness of a moment
me in your kitchen, our time terribly wasted
as the evening surrenders itself to morning.
Poem and illustration by me.
(Click to expand photo)
Created on November 11, 2026
Published on November 13, 2026
A Conversation With...
New!
Ara & Izzie
A chat between two best friends.
KO: What's something you're afraid of losing as the two of you grow older?
Izzie
Time!! For me it's always time, never having enough time to do what we want and not being able to use some of our time to interact and hang out.
Ara
Nothing. From when we were 13 to now, our relationship has grown but I’ve always had Izzie and I truly forever will.
A Little Green
by Abby Sham (@oneinabbyllion_)
The feeling of losing something we took for granted. It explores the theme of also losing yourself to a routine, to a mundanity that surrounds us.
Created on October 25, 2026
Published on November 4, 2026
Waking up to my best friend with green skin is not something I enjoy doing. And it's not a bright green that hurts your eyes like they do in movies—it's more of a muted, minty colour? Surely it's just paint. Gently, I shake him awake. “Dude, did you paint yourself like a sick elf on the shelf last night?” His eyes don't open immediately, but when they do, my gaze is greeted by a pair of non-existent pupils. “Uh, a blind elf on the shelf?” Finally looking around, he notices the greenish tinge on his hands and bolts out of the room, slamming the bathroom door shut. Yup. Definitely just a drunk decision. I give the door three knocks. “You okay? How much did you drink last night?” “Like, two shots!” He yells. The sink is gurgling loudly. “Let me know if you need anything!” I laugh. Did I mention how much I dislike waking up to a green best friend? “I thought you washed the paint off yesterday.” I groan, shoving off the covers and stretching. “Are your contacts still in too?” Another tiny shriek and a run for the bathroom. That's two weeknights in a row. Man, his schoolwork must have him swamped to be drinking this often. “Okay, you've really got to do something about all… this.” I motion to his cerulean complexion. “And I don't think white pupils are doing it for me either.” It's the third morning in a row I've seen green. “I'm starting to think you're an alien.” I chuckle. He shifts nervously from one foot to another. Did his feet always look like that? “If I told you I was, would you believe me?” Nah, I'm just having morning exhaustion. . . . It's been a while since I've seen him. Some joke about going back to a home planet still haunts me. I didn't realize how much I'd miss our routine together, even if it was a little green. Waking up alone makes the apartment feel too big for me. If he remembers me, while he's in space in the cosmos somewhere, I hope my tan skin didn't bother him much either.
Pen and Paper
by Luckshmi Ramanan
Who are we when we turn off the lights? Tell me, child, what shape will your words take? Maybe you will find some part of yourself, dulled and forgotten, and cradle it again to let its colours flow freely.
(Click to expand photo)
Created on August 20, 2026
Published on November 4, 2026
Starstruck
by Anonymous
Looking out from a lonely metal tube in space, you are surrounded by countless brilliant stars, each one grand and magificent in its own right. For months, you watch from afar as they sing, play, and dance among themselves, a mere sheet of glass keeping you apart. To reach for the stars, you must first break the glass.
(Click to expand photo)
Created on August 31, 2026
Published on November 4, 2026
Background information on this piece
This work was inspired by the prompt, "Breaking cycles of trauma or unhealthy habits". It represents the loneliness of knowing kind, talented, or likeminded individuals (the stars reflected in the window), but being too anxious to take the initiative to speak to them or spend time with them. When this happens, it can spiral from being a one-off occurrence into a pattern of isolation. Ironically, these people might still just be a call or text away, a barrier only practically as insurmountable as the fractured glass in the picture. Conversely, all it takes is one small step (breaking the glass) to begin escaping this vicious cycle and reach out to those around oneself.
The process of making Issue 7
by Kai Oszlai
If you asked me to rank all seven issues of Our Diary, I'd probably short-circuit. That's like asking a parent to pick their favourite child. I love them all, flaws and all, and I refuse to entertain the question. That being said, Issue 7 has, without a doubt, my favourite graphics we've ever done. HAHA! Sorry, not sorry. Space-y stuff has my heart.
For many of you, this might be your first time visiting Our Diary during an issue release. If that's the case, welcome! You've caught us at a particularly exciting moment.
I figured I'd take this opportunity to pull back the curtain on how the team and I put one of these things together. And believe me, it is a feat. Behind every finished issue is a ridiculous number of decisions, half-baked ideas, abandoned drafts, and hours spent staring at a screen wondering why something that looked perfectly fine five minutes ago has suddenly decided to look like shit.
Consider this a coffee chat between friends. You get all the hot gossip (which, regrettably, consists mostly of my all-nighters and ongoing feud with Wix), and I get to unload several months' worth of thoughts into a Google Doc at 5:30 AM on the very day this issue goes live.
I’d say that’s dedication, no? Anyway!
The first step is always planning. Our team gets together over video call and starts throwing ideas around. Anything goes, really. Someone might bring up an artwork they recently discovered, a political event in the news, or a colour scheme they saw somewhere and thought looked cool. We dump everything into a document, and look for connections between themes.
We're especially interested in the things relevant to young people. What are we angry about? What are we celebrating? What are we trying to figure out? We want our issues to give those conversations somewhere to accumulate, and goodness knows Gen Z has plenty to say.
Issue 3: The Gen Z Experience was a particularly successful showcase of that. Looking back, a lot of our issues have gravitated toward social justice, relationships, growing up, and new experiences. It’s doesn't surprise me: we're all growing up alongside this magazine, and our interests worm their way into our work.
For Issue 7, my contribution to the brainstorming session came courtesy of a book. I'd finished reading Samantha Harvey's Orbital the night before our meeting, so, of course, it was all I could think about on call! I was particularly drawn to its cover, the colours, its use of repetition, and the conversations surrounding existentialism.
It was also August. I'd just graduated high school and was preparing to start university, which meant I was eating existential thoughts for breakfast. Those months felt like being in a subway station! It’s such a liminal, transitional period, you know? Suddenly, people were moving away and the future was approaching like a meteor.
I figured the team might have something to say about that. After all, I wasn't the only one preparing to leave stuff behind. At some point, we landed on our prompt:
Everything revolves around something. What keeps you moving?
We put the title to a vote, and Orbit came out on top. Echo was our runner-up, which I also think is a pretty good name. I'm curious whether anyone reading this would've voted differently.
With the theme decided, our artists and writers got to work doing what they do best. You'll find contributions from Joyce, April, and Luckshmi throughout this issue, and, as usual, they've outdone themselves. (Their Issue 7 features are linked!)
Meanwhile, Patrick and I got to deal with the decidedly less glamorous side of running a magazine: website logistics, finances, scheduling, yada yada. It doesn’t make for particularly exciting Instagram stories but does, unfortunately, keep the whole operation alive. I think we'd both agree that conducting interviews is a much nicer way to spend an afternoon.
Once we'd gathered a decent collection of work, both from our own team and from you lovely people who submitted, it was time to assemble the website. It is simultaneously one of my favourite and least favourite parts of the entire process. It's incredibly gratifying to watch a collection of randomly-named files slowly become something coherent. It's also a spectacular way to lose track of time. I'm convinced the staff at the coffee shop down the street from my university could draw my face from memory.
Thankfully, I wasn't starting from scratch this time! We've developed a fairly reliable system for formatting written and visual submissions, which means I can devote more attention to the fun stuff like graphics and changing up the whole website to match the theme. For In Orbit, that meant leaning heavily into the cosmic aesthetic. I went hunting for cool-looking planets and moons on Pinterest and scattered them throughout the pages. Used a lot of black, neon greens, and blues to match.
Fun fact: my signature in the introduction section of the issue is inspired by the 1977 "Wow!" space signal. Bet you didn't know that :)
If this is your first time visiting us, you might be surprised to learn how different Our Diary looked when we started. Go take a peek at Issue 1: The Start of Our Diary. We had a pretty minimal purple-and-white colour scheme. It’s kinda charming, looking back… you can literally see me figuring things out, HAHA. I do love where we're headed, though. Our newer issues are progressively getting louder and weirder.
Of course, once the desktop website is looking gorgeous, there's one final obstacle standing between me and happiness:
The mobile display. Jesus Christ.
Switching to the mobile view means discovering that Wix has taken your work and thrown it down a flight of stairs. My text boxes are both duplicated and nowhere to be found. Where the hell is that painting I spent 15 minutes adjusting?! So, I spend the next several hours fixing everything… again. (Curse you, Wix.)
I do my best to make the mobile experience enjoyable, but I'll admit that the desktop version is where the magazine really shines. If you're reading this on your phone, consider this my very unsubtle attempt to convince you to open your laptop. (Please. I worked so hard on it.)
Now, the thing that actually inspired me to write this little article was the Instagram poster that probably brought you here in the first place. I finished drawing it about an hour ago. Yes, I know it’s on release day. Sue me.
It took me roughly six hours, give or take, and I had an absolute blast the entire time. I'm fairly certain I listened to enough Incubus and Stone Temple Pilots to cover both bands' entire discographies. (Why couldn’t my creative process have been fueled by any other circumstance?) I've included some photos of the drawing process below because I thought you might enjoy seeing how it came together.
Anyways, In Orbit was meant to be released in time with the new school semester in September. It’s now November, and so much has changed since we began planning it in August. We've moved cities, met new people, and started, pretty much, entirely new lives.
I hope you leave Our Diary today remembering something here. Maybe a photograph? A sentence that makes you think, “why didn’t I write that”? Someone you hadn’t thought of in a while? And if you do, tell the person who made it. I’m serious! It’s an amazing compliment to receive.
That said, it's getting dangerously close to sunrise, and I still have a magazine to release.
See you around the sun.
Much love,
Kai
