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This is an interesting community to watch, because people do such imaginative things with their journals. As I've noted before, I've been keeping a daily journal since the age of 14 (and I'm 47 now). I'm such a creature of habit about it: I always buy the same type, the At-A-Glance Standard Diary that has one page a day:

Standard Diary

But, as I've noted several times this past year, I've had some unusual trouble this year keeping it up. I've skipped days at a time, which is something I never used to do. My entries feel dry and uninteresting, and I continually fight the feeling, "I've said this all a million times before, so why repeat it?" Partly it's the depression, of course, and perhaps part of the trouble is that I'm keeping this LiveJournal, too, and the two sort of compete for my energy. And frankly, the LiveJournal is rather more fun, because I can add links and pictures and get comments back. But I still would like to keep up a paper diary, too.

I wonder whether trying to get boldly experimental, like some of the folks at the

embodiment community do, would help. I've never considered myself much of a visual artist, but perhaps if I added more of an element of play to the paper version, that might help?

Do you keep a paper journal as well as your LiveJournal? How long have you done so? How do the two different journals perform different roles for you? Why do you like to keep both? What do you do to keep the paper journal interesting for yourself? How have your journaling habits changed? (As you got older, your life changed, as you added LiveJournal, etc.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My paper journal, you mean? From the beginning, my only audience has been, for the most part, me. As far as I know, I've always lived with people who respected the privacy of my journal and did not read them. I always wrote thinking only that I would be the only person to read them.

It wasn't until an adult and had been writing in them for years that I really considered that other people could read them, and might, some day. I had wondered whether they might be bequeathed to a historical museum or something, either as a bit of personal history for a typical midwesterner, if anyone would be interested, or if (as I sometimes hoped in my most private musings, although the hope has certainly faded quite a bit) I became a well-known enough writer that someone might be interested in my personal papers, as part of a literary estate (graduate students, others of that ilk, etc.).

The understanding I have come to in the end is that the journals are mine, and mine alone, as long as I am alive. After I die, Rob can read them, and the girls can read them after the age of 21, with the caveat that they understand that the journals were always meant, during my lifetime, for my eyes alone, and so the thoughts within are extremely candid and blunt.

After that, I suppose it would depend on whether any institution might have any interest in them, but it would be the decision for Rob and/or the girls (unless I find some institution to which I'd bequeath them upon my death. Haven't found one yet.

Maybe I'm not asking my question properly, or maybe I'm asking a question that makes sense to me but not to you. I'm not asking who will be able to read your journal. I am asking who, at the time you are writing, is in your head as your reader.

When I write, for example, my reader is an abstract entity I think of as my "audience." My audience may have characteristics -- computer literate, interested, smart, general, etc -- but they're never personified.

It doesn't sound like you're writing to your future grown children. ("September 16, 2003: Ah, that's why she was so pissed off in the afternoon.") Are you writing to your future self? Can someone write without thinking about their readers at all?

B

No, your question makes sense to me. Truly, the only person I "write to" when I write in my journal is myself. I codify the meta-thoughts that are hanging around in my brain about each day and put them down on paper. But they are still only meant for me, for today, not even (I think) my future self.

That is why I have said that more than anything else, what my journal has done the most for me is to make me self-aware/self-reflective.

This is fascinating to me. The few times I've tried starting a journal I've failed almost from the beginning because I never had an audience in my head. I tried writing for "posterity"; that didn't work. I tried writing to myself in the future -- reminding myself of things I had forgotten -- and that didn't work either. It never made sense to me to write to myself in the present, as you are doing, so that didn't work . So I would give up, about as quickly as I started.

One of your advantages is that you started so young, before this kind of nonsense invades your brain. By the time you thought to figure out who you were writing for, it was already habit. I don't know.

B

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