Legacy Writing 365:190

Most of Sunday I tried to bring organization to all these different things that have gotten away from me. Along with bills and correspondence, I’m trying to whip the guest room into shape. It’s been piled high with doll stuff, art stuff, and Christmas gifts to be wrapped (yeah, I know, I know).

With more than 300 dolls, if I don’t keep their whereabouts under control, I might misplace a dog under them or something. We do keep most of the dolls packed in bins in the attic–and some packed away at Tim’s or in the garage, where I’ll have quick access to them if I want them for a photo shoot. Somewhere along the way, I decided to do a kind of Designer’s Look Book to keep up with my models–when I’ve used them, what their model names are, who gave them to me, and technical details about them (face sculpts, for example). I had an extra Moleskine from Marika that I thought would be a good place for this and decorated it accordingly:

When my hard drive died in late 2010, I lost my computer list of all the dolls I have, their photos, and where they’re stored. I had a printed copy, and the photos had been stored on Flickr, so I’ve been re-creating it. Thus my Look Book suddenly turned into a doll inventory book, as well. It’s time-consuming and of course no one could give a flip about it but me, but I do love listing all the dolls’ details, including the ones that were given to me from people’s childhood collections. Those are among the most special dolls of all.

For some reason, all of this made me think about record-keeping in general, and diaries and journals in particular. Groups of people in NYC and London called Cringe have long met and done public readings from their angst-ridden teenage diaries. So here you go.

Fourteen-year-old Becky.
Fourteen-year-old Becky’s diary.


In other words, I predated Twitter and Facebook by DECADES.

Those names at the end–those are the boys I have crushes on THAT DAY. Because if there’s a week of entries, that list is subject to change daily. Do I remember who these boys were? Oddly, yes. By the way, if any girls from JHS stumble over this, they aren’t your boyfriends. They are some other boys with those same names.

Also, I think y’all should know that when Lynne (and she was “Lynn” then, btw) and I really liked something or someone, our word for it/him was “tuff.”

8 thoughts on “Legacy Writing 365:190”

  1. Great use of your notebook! BTW, your teenage diary made me flashback to the fact that I was once able to mirror-write the entries in mine to keep my brothers from snooping. I threw it away a few years ago when I discovered I could no longer read it without using a mirror.

    1. It still cracks me up that you did that. So much effort.

      Nothing would have kept my mother from reading mine. To be continued…

    1. All THREE. You’ve sent me three, and all are currently in use. I have another journal from Lynne I’ve been eyeballing for something as yet undecided.

      And you both are tuff for giving them to me!

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