Journals rhymes with urinals. As I was dropping my son off at the scout campout tonite, I asked if they had bathrooms. He said, "The world is my urinal." O... kay....
Anyway, do you all keep journals? What do you write about? Is it deep or more surface stuff... "got called to Primary today"... :snore: Do you sugar-coat stuff? Do you leave out the hard stuff? Do you want people to read it? Only after you're dead? Would people a hundred years from now even find it interesting? If you have a boring journal does that mean you had a boring life?
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
My dad has printed out and put in the basement every email he has sent or received, and he is a sappy email forwarder, which means 3-4 emails a day from him. He claims these emails are his journal, at least the real ones. I guess if he ever becomes president and historians want to document his every move up to that point, these will come in handy.
I keep a "surface stuff" journal where I sugarcoat or leave out the hard parts. I call it the whole family's history. I quit my own personal journal after it got too depressing.
Interestingly, I was talking to my mom one day, and she said she'd quit keeping her own journal when it got too depressing too.
So add a question coco: Is your journal depressing?
I also do much better when I am sending emails that writing my journal. My open journal is more descriptive usually than my personal journal too. And yes, I white wash my journal. I am glad that I have as someone in my house spied on my journal. I would have hate to have hurt their feelings by being honest. I have told them things that upset me in person, but it would seem so cold in print. I don't want people to read my private journal until later like the next generation.
Janey- See, you've hit on my very point! Wouldn't you love to read your Mom's journal, even if it got depressing? Even if she talked about the hard, real life stuff? I would love to find some journal of some long-ago unknown gggggrandmother who just told things like it was. Straight up. Sugar-coating be danged.
But see... no one wants to do that. It's walking off into the blackness that nobody wants to walk into. So we stop writing "that" stuff. We don't want people to know "that" about us. We want to appear better than we are. We want people to look up to us, or at least not look down on us.
I don't think my journal was ever depressing. It was usually lively and upbeat. If there were negative things, it was more anger or "venting" ... some sad, "depressing" things, too I'm sure. Sometimes I kept a "side" journal just for reeeealy cutting loose that I would destroy later... like self-therapy. No holds barred, if you get my drift. Then I'd fantisize that some ggggranddaughter would read it someday and she'd be like and it would sort of cheer me up. The destruction nevertheless went through.
Yes, zeal, it wouldn't be good for feelings to get hurt... I guess we're always censoring in some way or another.
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
I don't know, coco. I like reading about honest responses to hard situations. I guess I was referring more to pointless navel-gazing when I talked about my journal being depressing. It would be boring. Now, summarizing it into a life history kind of thing might be okay. Less tedious to read, and there's an ending, whether it's positive or negative.
OTOH, I do have a ggg-grandmother who left a detailed journal of her trip crossing the plains. They made a display out of it in the Church History Museum, it's so inspiring. They left out the ending though - she got ticked and left the Church after getting to Utah. And we only have vague rumors about why (she believed a Church leader cheated her in a business deal). Then there's this other ggg-grandmother whose letters to her missionary husband are an inspiration. After he got home, they got divorced. Again, we don't know why. It would be nice to be able to fill in those gaps, but we hush them up instead.
The thing is, I don't know if those omissions are from the original journal-keepers, or if they got taken out later by descendants who didn't want anything to tarnish grandma's memory.
Yes, wouldn't it be great to be able to fill in the blanks on our ancestors? That's cool about the Church History museum - yer famous!! Isn't that interesting that the Church still finds her journals of great worth, even though she left the Church later? I find it interesting how people can change throughout their lives... I would love to read detailed, honest journals of people's struggles with life, their testimonies, relationships, doubts, etc...
And yes, I guess there's always the meddling third parties who decide to do what's "best."
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
I kept a journal dang near every day for 7 or 8 years. Then I got married and got busy and gradually stopped. When I was doing it, it was all real, no sugarcoating. But then...I was/am a pretty sheltered person, so there really wasn't anything shocking. Embarassing, yes; shocking, no. (The pre-married journal years contained lots of adolescent crushes and romanticizing.)
Now I blog. It's more journal about my kids, but I throw in stuff about me every so often. I also save old emails too. I was thinking awhile ago that I should go track down a lot of my more interesting forum posts and save some of those. But then...I don't really want to wade through everything I've posted to sort out the interesting stuff.
I'm a lot like Euph in that I kept a journal very well for about 10 years until I got married. Now it's very sporadic. When I was rather young I would simply vent in my journals, but when I was in college I received a blessing that I was to write in my journal every day and not write anything bad. That was a VERY hard thing for me to do, but I started doing it, and it changed my whole outlook on life. I don't think that would work for everyone, but it forced me to find the good in the world and life around me, something I hadn't been able to do on my own before. Now it's kind of a mix. I guess I self-censor a little, but I see myself as writing to my descendants, so I write mostly what I want them to know or what I think they would want to know. Observations, mostly. Lots of spiritual stuff. I blog, too, and I would like to keep those. Won't it be interesting in fifty to 100 years to be able to look back and analyze people via the public web rather than private documents? Weird!
Yeah, the Internet has completely changed recordkeeping. Does anyone even do photo albums on paper anymore? I do, but it's so non-technological I'm almost embarrassed to admit it. They're not even cute and scrapbooked, just pictures taped to a page. Non-cute and non-technological both!
I do my photo albums on paper still. (And I'm majorly behind) I like the feel of holding a book and looking at it and that goes for photo's, too. Plus, what do you do when TEOTWAWKI comes and we're plunged back to the middle ages?
And no, mine are not "scrapbooks" in the sense of stickers and curly-edged cut-outs and stamps, where people pretend they're artsy but they're woefully not.
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Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid. -John Wayne
I did a great job of journaling as a teenager, and pretty much stopped completely once I entered University.
And it's really too bad, because journaling was a great way for me to receive revelation. I can't remember how many times I would start at the top of the page discussing something that was troubling me, and three lines from the bottom would start writing, "Hmmm, maybe I should try this." I called it "active pondering."
But I found even then I wasn't comfortable going on and on about someone I was angry or upset at, because it seemed to feed it. So I was honest about struggles, but venting anger didn't feel right. I have no idea how to walk that tightrope for someone who's dealing with something like an unfaithful spouse. But I want to read honesty regarding struggles and blessings.
And regarding photo albums, I still do mine on paper as well. I do scrapbook, but I'm an opinionated and cheap scrapbooker, who thinks everyone should get away from the goo-gaws and focus on lots and lots of journaling and being photo-safe. I have no stickers, die-cuts, stamps or patterned paper in my books. It's white background, solid color matting and paragraphs of writing for me. So crafty scrapbookers don't get me, and non-scrapbookers don't get me either.
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They might not look it, but bunnies can really take care of themselves.
and it would sort of cheer me up. The destruction nevertheless went through.
That's cool about the Church History museum - yer famous!! Isn't that interesting that the Church still finds her journals of great worth, even though she left the Church later? I find it interesting how people can change throughout their lives... I would love to read detailed, honest journals of people's struggles with life, their testimonies, relationships, doubts, etc...
