After years of weekly entries, since I started this blog I have only written in my personal journal once.
I saw "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" on somebody's Facebook book favorite list, (I can't find it again- who was that?) and during my allotted two minutes in the grown-ups area at the end of Mia's library time, I saw it and snatched it up. My problem with books: I can't put them down- even when I'm the mom of three kids, apparently. So a few days after starting it, I've finished it (my house paid the price), and I've got a renewed desire to keep my journal.
I wonder if blogging has been detrimental to anyone else's journal-keeping. Who would Anne have been in the world of blogging? This book probably wouldn't exist if she knew she wasn't just writing to her dear patient friend made of paper and binding. (Well, I am in the world of blogging, and so far, I don't regret it. A season for everything, and everyone. I wonder what it is about me that qualified me as a candidate for birth in 1978...)
I really love this book. It seems as if she was destined to write it. Every element of those last years of her life contributing to a drama so perfect, a personality so engaging, uplifting and endearing.
What struck me as odd is that according to her, no one she met in her short life ever saw the side of her that we read. I doubt this book would be such a library staple if people didn't relate to that hidden-hidden person. I think that's just because we all have a hidden, vulnerable second self, too. And something about reading her unbridled thoughts, seeing someone else's vulnerable self, makes that better person in us a little stronger.
3 comments:
I think you should print your blog entries and call it a journal. I think that would work greeeaaaat! Just hole punch or staple them together and slip them in your journal... Who knows, maybe someday the diary of Summer Van Wagoner will be a must read! I know I'm addicted.
Hey! I just read that book too! Well, listened to it on my iPod. But still...same thing. And yes, my journal writing is suffering, but I don't think it has anything to do with blogging....
I copy my blog entries over to my wordprocessor to keep them as a type of journal.
As you know, I'm pretty free with my thoughts on my blog - probably to a fault. I don't really hold much back. So I do consider it an honest account of my life and thoughts.
Someone once mentioned that blogging as your journal is fine, if you keep it private. But the moment you allow others to view it or comment on it, it ceases to be a journal. I'm not sure I agree with that. If we write a journal, with the intent of passing it down through the generations as part of our family history documents, then at some point, someone is going to have to read it and actually witness it.
I don't care if others see it now and not in 100 years, after it's been in hiding waiting for me to die. It's all the same to me.
I would let some people read my journal, even if it weren't my blog. I try to keep my thoughts honest, but also respectable, so I don't see the issue with letting people witness my thoughts and life. They're seeing it anyway just by associating with me!!!
Anyway. Too Much Information, I realize.
Maybe it's the naptime, that just makes me want to type and type and type.....
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