I Write In a Journal Daily
I have kept short diary since just before my eleventh birthday. From the age of 16, with an early gap of a couple of months, I have written a full journal. Although I do not believe that anyone but me ever looked at it, after I learned shorthand, in my late twenties, I started using that, which had the added bonus of ensuring that I used it every day. (On the downside, of course, it ensured that my handwriting became increasingly bad, especially now that everything seems to be written on keyboards!)
In all those years, however bad or misguided my writings may have been, I have left the journal alone. However, I have recently been re-reading what I wrote about a relationship-that-never-was, over a period of years and found it so excruciating that I felt I could not possibly permit even the chance that a family member might one day read it. (I believe that software exists that can decipher shorthand.) It also distressed me and I would never want to look at this material again, myself.
So, over the last few weeks, I have been through the documents, page by page, marking up many sections for deletion and have now scanned about 2000 pages, in jpg format. I am currently going through all this material, electronically deleting the highlighted passages. Since this leaves huge gaps, I am going to move some of the remaining text around and also make the finished product more interesting by inserting pictures. Then, the pages will be printed and professionally bound. Finally, the original volumes will be destroyed.
Has anyone else, on here, ever done something similar? A part of me feels that this is a great betrayal of everything that a journal should be about. I once acquired the (much shorter) journal of a poet’s lesbian lover which had had the same treatment, done years ago with heavy black ink and scissors. All the interesting bits seem to have been about their love life, although only a few fragments remain legible through the ink. What a pity! In my case, nothing actually happened, beyond a lot of naval gazing, so nothing of interest will actually be lost.
One final point. I used to think that consigning a lot of emotional, intimate stuff to my journal was an excellent way of working through it. Looking at it again, I see little beyond wallowing self-indulgence. For some time, now, I have decided to write nothing about the matter in my journal; and my conclusion is that all that scribbling actually made things worse and prevented me from moving on. In the unlikely event that anything similar happens again, my journal will be the last to know about it.
In all those years, however bad or misguided my writings may have been, I have left the journal alone. However, I have recently been re-reading what I wrote about a relationship-that-never-was, over a period of years and found it so excruciating that I felt I could not possibly permit even the chance that a family member might one day read it. (I believe that software exists that can decipher shorthand.) It also distressed me and I would never want to look at this material again, myself.
So, over the last few weeks, I have been through the documents, page by page, marking up many sections for deletion and have now scanned about 2000 pages, in jpg format. I am currently going through all this material, electronically deleting the highlighted passages. Since this leaves huge gaps, I am going to move some of the remaining text around and also make the finished product more interesting by inserting pictures. Then, the pages will be printed and professionally bound. Finally, the original volumes will be destroyed.
Has anyone else, on here, ever done something similar? A part of me feels that this is a great betrayal of everything that a journal should be about. I once acquired the (much shorter) journal of a poet’s lesbian lover which had had the same treatment, done years ago with heavy black ink and scissors. All the interesting bits seem to have been about their love life, although only a few fragments remain legible through the ink. What a pity! In my case, nothing actually happened, beyond a lot of naval gazing, so nothing of interest will actually be lost.
One final point. I used to think that consigning a lot of emotional, intimate stuff to my journal was an excellent way of working through it. Looking at it again, I see little beyond wallowing self-indulgence. For some time, now, I have decided to write nothing about the matter in my journal; and my conclusion is that all that scribbling actually made things worse and prevented me from moving on. In the unlikely event that anything similar happens again, my journal will be the last to know about it.
By:
zzltfrg
Age:
46-50
1
response
