The Dangers of Keeping a Journal

I once had a boyfriend. He once read my journal. He read all about me sleeping with another man. I no longer had a boyfriend.

In the end, it helped our situation. The relationship had been over for a while, for me anyway, and I was too much of a coward to confront it. Walking away would have been much more noble than the cheating, but I was twenty-two and hadn't learned that lesson yet. In my ex-boyfriend's defense, he did what he had to do. He was not an ever-doubtful type of guy. He didn't have my voicemail access code or my e-mail password nor had he ever asked for them. This came about because, to his credit, he knows me very well, and he sensed that something was very wrong. He confronted me twice. The first time he asked me what was was up. I answered, "Nothing." The second time he asked me if there was someone else. I said no. He knew better and rightfully sought evidence to support his unwelcome theory.

Someone potentially reading a journal is one of the reasons many people don't keep them, and it is certainly a dangerous aspect of the craft. It is not, however, the most dangerous aspect. The most dangerous aspect is telling yourself something you didn't want to know. We, as human beings, lie to ourselves all the time. It's very strange and counter productive. We'll tell ourselves we like job when we don't. We'll tell ourselves we're in love with someone when we're not. We'll tell ourselves we aren't attracted to a person when we are. So to me a journal is that place to be unabashedly honest with yourself, and it's dangerous because you won't always like what you see. You'll look at your thoughts and say, "I don't actually think that do I?" You do and it's fine. Admittance is the first step in anything. You have to admit to yourself you have a dream before you can pursue it. You have to admit you have a problem before you can solve it. So I say write openly and honestly. Burn the pages if you must, but first confront all that is going on in your mind.

If you're not sure where to being with writing a journal OR you simply enjoy reading other people's journals, check out my book Note To Self. Here's the trailer (ex-boyfriend and all):

Comments

[dadw5boys]

I fear for my sons after all the women who have latched on to me over the years looking for a daddy or checkbook. All the lies and self promotion women have told just to get into my life and access to money. It is amazing that all I ever said was take your stuff and leave. Once I told her take what ever you want and get out of my life. She took everything but the couch and was back a week later with a full rental trailor and no where to go and she sold me my stuff back for $500.00 cash.

So many thousands of dollars down the drain behind lies. Now everyone in my life gets a full background check and I am teaching my kids how to get the checks done right. I know some little skirt is going to try and take every dime if I don't tie it up in trust funds with multiply payout dates.
All I have come from 48 years of my work 60 years of my father and 58 years of my mothers hard work. I am responsible to see that this wealth and the hard work that made it are not insulted and wasted.

[Theda]

YOU'RE the one who told her "take whatever you want and get out of my life."
You LET her take "everything but the couch." That was your fault.
Did you just stand there and watch while she took all your possessions?
You should have just told her "get out of my life."

[lacyadjuster]

Why are the only choices mentioned to put it on facebook or on paper? Have you heard of a memory stick and password protected word documents? Thank Gawd for technology~ my written pages were read long ago and ended a serious relationship. I was paranoid to write it down again. I think it has been part of our humanness that we reflect via prayer, a journal, meditation, whatever rocks your boat and makes you look inside and face yourself. Its been done since cavemen painted their caves people. I am so grateful to be able to look at me in a private way and not feel paranoid. Its helped me grow and develop and mature in a thoughtful way.

[conservicide]

Why do people blame the medium???

It's not a journal, blog or words that need hiding, it's the rotten person they represent!

Don't do anything you'd be ashamed of or don't be ashamed of anything you do and you can write whatever the hell you want to.

[gfk]

Don't put anything in writing that you don't want to see on the front page of the New York Times. Same thing with photos.

[XCITIZEN]

Part 1

I'm hesitant to comment because I feel this post is really just a book promotion, but here it goes...

I agree with the assertion of other commenters that there is a kind of tragic exhibitionism about keeping a journal online. While it may be a healing experience for the writer, and a healing experience for those who read, it seems this kind of introspection is really pretty rare on the internet. Most online 'journals' are exercises in narcissism, and so much of it has become just the internet version of the reality tv show, where Ms. or Mr. Nobody get to be the star.

I don't want to make such a broad generalization, but it seems for the young that privacy is not only gone, it actually never existed. It was in the process of being eliminated at the very earliest stages of their lives, through successive generations of media and technological advances, until it seems that now anytime someone is not experiencing the most 'intimate' aspects of life in 'exhibitionist' mode, with an audience to cheer or jeer with an endless stream of attention, but no actual contact, then one is not really having that experience at all. People expect instant validation from the oracle of the internet for every experience.

Experiences are no longer expressed via technology, they are literally, not experiences without the ever present interface and technological enhancements.

[XCITIZEN]

Part 2

I am old enough to remember (in the days before the internet) when keeping a journal was a sacred practice, a way to see one's inner life, to create one's identity in a kind of sacred, secret personal space that was untouched by the outside world. Those days are GONE. Now the self seems to be manufactured, a group project, edited, commented on, enhanced, all through technology. The creation of this technological 'self' on the internet can only happen as an exhibitionistic event. Privacy, in the new paradigm, actually prevents the new 'self' from emerging. How convenient that privacy, then, no longer exists.

Now it's "Dude, you would not believe, I'm so f**kng famous online!" And now for the video trailer about the book about Samara O'Shea's sense of her own privacy, or whatever it's about.

[wildflowermaven]

journals are great--wish I wrote in mine more regularly. In addition to what you noted, I also love journals because they can capture the moment so well. You go back later, and it refreshs and fill out you memory--which fades with time

[ouroborous]

Today's young people will never understand this until it's too late.

I'm just old enough (so-called "Generation X") to realize that the act of putting every private tidbit online is compromising. I'm not just talking about cheating here, I'm talking about even things that aren't technically illegal or even immoral, but still are compromising -- like college grads who are presenting a sober, businesslike facade at a job interview, even while their facebook page is full of wild, booze-laden party pictures or drug references.

It goes deeper than that. What made me stop blogging about my personal life was my realization that, at its core, it's sort of unhealthy. It's a kind of exhibitionism, a sort of "hey, if I show you EVERYTHING about me, all my wild, weird, needy, and quirky facets, will you love me? Will you friend me? Will you COMMENT?"

The problem is that the medium and the sites are set up to artificially inflate the ego of people who play the game. You have 18,324 friends! Wow... really? Of those 18,324, which ones know the first damned thing about you (which, in my accounting, is one of the basic prerequisites to me calling someone my "friend")?

I think that in just a few short years, we're going to look back on the culture of exhibitionism -- the Facebook culture, the MySpace culture, the Twitter culture -- as one of our most embarrassing phases, as a nation. It'll be the "mullet phase" of the internet.

[davidly]

I suspect that she is recommending the old-fashioned pencil and paper variety; hence the reference to burning the pages afterward if you must.

[Idytme]

Go back to rule one. All journals get read.
If you are the type to write until a sudden revelation, then writing and burning might be worth it, but most just write to fumigate their current feelings.
As to blogging, facebook and the rest, I am sure there will people a lot of people with regrets. I agree entirely with the above comment.

[andygaus]

He's cute.