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I’m pretty sure anyone who tries to snoop through my old diaries will be put off by my penmanship. It takes effort to read my handwriting—even for me.
And if that doesn’t stop them, I figure boredom will. I’ve been journaling since I was a teenager and my life since then has been like a series of baseball games: brief episodes of excitement separated by long periods of monotony. Anybody going through the play-by-play will have to look for a long time to find anything exciting and I like to think they’ll lose interest by then.
But just in case I’m wrong, I decided that I should do something with my diaries—or journals as I like to call them. It sounds more sophisticated. And you know me—I’m nothing if not sophisticated.
A friend told me that she’s instructed her children to destroy her journals after she dies—and without reading them first. She’s convinced they’ll do as she asks. I don’t know her kids, but I figure if they heed her instructions, they’re either angelic or illiterate.
Maybe I’m projecting. Knowing yourself well is one of the benefits of keeping a journal. And I know myself well enough to know that if I were a member of my friend’s family, I’d start reading her journals shortly after I got home from her funeral. I certainly don’t expect others to be better people than I am, though they often are.
Other friends have told me that they want their children to read what they’ve written. They intend to share the wisdom they’ve gained over a lifetime with the ones they love and they encourage me to do the same. Obviously they haven’t read my journals. At least I hope they haven’t.
It’s amazing to me now, but there was a time I thought I would want my son to read my journals too. That was before I started reading them myself. In my defense, let me say I did fill an entire notebook specifically for him between his birth and the time he graduated from high school. He won’t have to read my old diaries to learn from my wisdom. I was able to put it all in one little book.
After hearing my friends’ plans for their journals, I came up with an entirely different one for mine: I’m going to donate them to my alma mater. Not really, and not just because they wouldn’t want them.
Actually I’ve started shredding them as fast as I can. I read a journal, tear out the sections I can’t bear to part with, then shred the rest of it quicker than you can say, “What wisdom?”
I can only stand to read one or two journals before I have to put them aside and read something else. And I live in fear I’ll get struck by lightning before I get them all shredded. But reading them is enlightening. I’m amazed at how much I’ve forgotten. On the one hand it’s good to know I’ve made some progress since I was 16. On the other hand, reading about my youth and beyond has relieved me of any notion that younger generations are less clever than mine was at their age.
Those who’ve never kept a diary may wonder why anyone would spend years doing all that work just to shred it all. I know it’s counterintuitive, but sometimes the point of keeping a journal isn’t to read it later. Among other benefits, journaling lessens anxiety, reduces stress and improves writing skills. And it’s inexpensive. All you need is a notebook, a pen and a shredder.
Dorothy Rosby is an author and humor columnist whose work appears regularly in publications in the West and Midwest. You can subscribe to her blog at www.dorothyrosby.com or contact at www.dorothyrosby.com/contact.
