1312: Do you keep a journal? Does it help you?
In my saga (because that’s what we’re calling the novels I’m writing that seemingly will go on indefinitely until my characters’ lives feel fully told), one character (the musician) is given several Moleskines by a friend, who tells him to start documenting his artistic life as it unfolds. He does, and also uses his journals for other purposes through the years.
Another character has secrets she never wants known, so she rejects the idea of ever keeping a diary or journal. Then something happens to her, and someone gives her wisdom that she feels is changing her and her life for the better. She never wants to forget a single thing he said. She buys her first Moleskine so that each time she remembers his guidance and can use it to make decisions and choose actions to take, she records it.
I’ve known of journals and diaries that led to heavy things. Like divorce. Broken friendships and families. Startling revelations about a person’s past. Unnecessary and undeserved pain and guilt to the readers.
But most journals are like other people’s dreams. They just don’t mean much except to the dreamer/journaler.
The first diary I kept (and still have) began in the eighth grade. In the years after, I started many, wrote in many. Rarely will I go back and read anything I wrote. It’s a little like how most of us react when we hear our recorded speaking voice: Is that what I sound like? EW!
What I usually think is, Is this REALLY what you wasted time and energy on? Grow up! Of course it’s grown-up me chastising myself, but Younger Me was living in the moment and doing what younger people do.
As the years passed, Older Me was doing a lot more things. LIFE was happening, and while I might have been reflecting on it internally, life didn’t leave time for documenting those reflections.
Ultimately I began jotting quick notes in yearly date books that afforded a little space for each day. It helped me keep up with where I’d been, who I’d seen, and also allowed me to check back to confirm when events occurred.
I’ve never gone back to keeping a diary or a journal, and I think it’s because of this blog. My blog life began (on Live Journal on December 14, 2004) as a means to make people aware of the TJB novels and then the novels I wrote with Timothy. It was more fun and personal than flooding MySpace and Facebook and Twitter with I WROTE SOMETHING, PLEASE BUY IT. In fact, LJ became a community of friends (and wannabe stalkers), and it was entertaining and enlightening for many reasons.
When people began to leave LJ, I migrated to this blog, and for a while, LJers and other people read and interacted with me here, and then people mostly stopped reading personal blogs. Instead, they began looking for hints from Influencers about life hacks, as well as how to monetize their own blogs. Celebrities started blogging, and ours is definitely a celebrity-obsessed culture.
I’m not an influencer. I’m not a celebrity. I’m never going public with dirt on my family, friends, or other writers. I’m not breathlessly sharing work drama, neighborhood spats, or public controversies. I write fiction for that kind of stuff. I borrow from life, but I don’t write memoir, autobiography, or biography. Nothing I’ve ever written from life can be counted on as being an accurate depiction of what happened in life. FICTION.
Here, you get: dolls, dogs, photos, places, novels, art, favorite music, movies, books, toys, and tellable friend and family stories. Sometimes you hear the heartbreaks I’m willing to share because I have reasons that motivate me to share them.
Why, sixteen years later, when hardly anyone blogs, and those who do are often sad about their small readership and limited interactions, do I still blog?
In life, I’ve been the memory keeper, the one people asked, “What year did we see that band,” “What was the name of that person (or place),” “When did we write that,” “Who won that game,” “What year did we watch that movie together,” “Who was I dating then,” “When did that dog get adopted/have surgery/die,” or “When is his/her birthday?”
I’m older. I’m tireder. I can’t remember things as well. I look up stuff here all the time to answer those kinds of questions. This blog has become my memory. It shows me what I was doing or thinking about during a certain time. It records the events that impacted me or intrigued me.
Other people search the blog, too, because they share a lot of these memories. They were part of it all. Good times, sad times, silly times, the friends, family members, and animals who’ve come and gone, who remain, all part of our hearts and the journey we’ve taken together. You’d never get all that–plus photos–from one of my journals or diaries. I think this is a better deal.
Now, about these dreams I’ve been having…
I think what I miss about more people blogging is the interaction. Yes, there’s a (big) part of me which seeks validation via comments – hey, someone noticed me – I exist – but it’s more about the interaction. I don’t ‘do’ any other social media. I learned the hard way how ‘unprivate’ a seemingly friends only Facebook account can be and have also learned how social media is bad for my mental health, so have never even bothered with ‘Snap’ or ‘Insta’ or whatever the cool kids are on. I spend way, way too much time staring at a screen as it is.
We have been reading each other’s blogs for a lot of years, so you will know that I don’t infringe people’s right to privacy. I don’t betray confidences and I don’t name and shame (unless it’s a politician, for example). I also ask before I post a photo of someone else. I think that, even with a paper journal, one has to consider how another person will react if they read it. As for the internet, well, nothing’s truly private on the internet. Like a stack of paper journals under one’s bed, someone will stumble across it one day.
I’m looking forward to this new series of novels you are writing. Do you think there is any likelihood of you and Timothy writing together again?
You are right. I remember one LJer who used to post deeply private stuff about other people. When questioned, the person pointed out, “My LiveJournal is locked!” But that assumes everyone who you’ve given access will never copy and paste what you wrote and pass it along elsewhere.
NOTHING on the Internet is ever private. Like you, friends and family members can offer a hard NO before I share photos or things about them. My family has been pretty cool because they know how much I love them and would protect them.
These are my stories, my perspectives, and you can bet that I get it wrong sometimes, but I NEVER write anything to hurt, expose, or demean people from my personal life. (Public figures who elicit a strong reaction from me, for good or bad, are public figures. They know commentary comes with that life, and nothing I say on my little blog is ever going to be the worst or best of what is said by others.)
On your journal, I think you do a really good job of protecting the people in your life. And it is more fun to have commenters and to engage, so we don’t feel like our words and interests are falling into a deep void. I’m glad we’ve maintained our interaction through the years. You’ve given me so many views into a world and a family history I’d never know otherwise. I’m happy you’re still hanging in there with your LJ!
I used to, but not anymore. I also found it fun to try to capture my dreams before they fade away, but now I wake up invaded by thoughts about work, which almost immediately erases any dream I had. Fortunately, certain moments can crack through but how they came about, is lost to the act of waking up back into reality again. That can be so frustrating.
It IS frustrating, isn’t it, to know you’ve dreamed something, to feel like it was important in some way, and to search your brain for even a wisp of it that will bring the dream back…and you get nothing. ARGH. Lately, I haven’t been remembering my dreams, I think because my sleep patterns are off. There are literally people who, sometimes before I fall asleep, I say aloud to them by name, You’re welcome to visit me in my dreams. I want to remember if they do!