I was clearing away some books that had accreted around the foot of my bed, and returning them to the bookcases in the spare bedroom, I came across an old, flower-covered hardbacked notebook which contains the diary of my time in Australia in 1991 - 92.
Off I went to bed to read it; what a hoot. It brought back all sorts of memories. Actually, quite a lot of the memories weren’t so good; I remembered quite strongly that Australia was a mixed blessing for me at that time in my life; I was desperately homesick, and the boy I had gone all that way for wasn’t particularly available for me. His parents had a huge influence on his life, if I remember correctly; they kept him as far out of my way as they could. So I ended up having a great time, but not with him!
Very interesting to look back on your earlier adult life and see your imperfections, wishes, actions revealed by your words. Of course, you wouldn’t know that was what you were revealing when you wrote it; it’s only after years of living and looking at and with yourself that these things become clear (er).
It got me thinking about this diary, which is just as candid and just as tinged with the ghosts of the present and those of the past; it got me thinking about the diary of my schooldays, stolen out of my car when I was at university and lost forever.
I have written journals in one form or another since I was very young; I have volumes of paper correspondence lying around unfiled and unsorted. Paper’s where I live the most clearly; now with the advent of the blog, the paper stays neat and unsullied, the edges are crisp and there is no need for crossings-out and caveats. People say you need to have lived a life before you can write about it; I’d say that that is only true if you’re expecting the reader to pay. If you do it for your own future edification, there’s no reason required. Hooray for that.
I wonder about diaries. When I think of my writing of my blog (which isn’t a diary — a significant portion of the stuff I write is either completely fabricated or altered in such a way that the meaning of the events is utterly changed), I find that the meanings of the things that I write are rarely what I intended them to be. In my case, I’m aiming for only some sort of pseudo-truth. For me, it isn’t at all distressing — in fact it is rather amusing to me — that I end up capturing a different pseudo-truth from the one I’m aiming for. If one is looking for an accurate reflection of what one was like (which seems a worthy goal — one can’t exactly learn from mistakes if one hasn’t noted them), does a diary do a good job of capturing what one was like?
Hmm. Now that I’ve typed that paragraph, it crosses my mind that part of what a diary says is what a person thought was worth writing down and that could indeed be very telling. I guess instead of removing that paragraph, I’ll leave it so that you get the fun of seeing that someone somewhere on the planet went through some new thoughts for them (well … me really) on reading your writings.
I’ve always wished that I kept a diary … I remember trying to start one and just not quite knowing what to write and then feeling ultra boring because I have nothing to write.
I guess I could put some stuff into the blog, but then, who knows who would come across it and read it?
Maybe I should be like ABS above and just make stuff up! Then my children can find it when I’m long gone and think “Wow! I never know Mom did all that stuff!”
ABS, I reckon that even at our most self-aware, what we write says volumes about us, the real us. And I like that you had a thought! The way my brain feels this morning, I don’t think I’ll ever have an original thought ever again. Groo.
Jen - I know what you mean about the implied lack of privacy a blog gives you. I reckon though that I’m hiding in plain sight, lost among all the soccer moms and christian parents and sports fans and political commentators and gamers and widget freaks who blog away, pouring out thousands and thousands of words. I’m just a little fish.
Ha, I know, I want to invent a glamorous, spy-riddled past too, but my child would never believe it!