When I was nine years old I started keeping a personal journal. I find that I end up writing mostly in times of stress or confusion, although for a while there I was in the habit of recording the events of days I spent with my lover when we were living 600 miles apart and I wished to look back and relive every detail. I also find that I write very intentionally, as though for an audience.

My uncle keeps a daily journal and at the end of every year he burns it and buys a new one. I myself have saved every journal I've had since I was a child, probably because I am a scholar and I can't bring myself to destroy the written word.

I never read through the really old ones, but once I was on a camping trip and torrential rain soaked the notebook I was journaling in at the time. I ended up reviewing the last year of my life as I attempted to dry the wet, bleeding pages with a blow-dryer when we got home. Now the book is warped and water-stained; it is wonderfully dramatic.

What about everyone else?

I started keeping a journal when I was in Grade 1. It was part of a school assignment, lasting about three or so years. Nothing particularly impressive or insightful for a 6-7 year old, but I loved drawing pictures in them. And my writing was messy (still is). It's strange to read them now.

It was really in my preteens that I started keeping a truly private journal though. Before that I talked to myself (a by-product of wanting an imaginary friend and, upon realizing no one is talking back to you, that you have a good way to focus your thoughts aloud) and had many unfinished story writing notebooks (school ones) and scattered drawings.

Honestly, my journals from ten to thirteen, when I saw them last (I lost them somewhere moving, but they're around) seemed very immature to me, although the special cartoons and comic strips I created throughout (and the world I constructed) still impresses me. I think I was more imaginative as a child than I really am now.

There was a gap after that, wrote on and off in high school in scattered journals (with stories) -- including a black notebook with neon pen (really cool).

I started a university journal a while ago, but it quickly became kind of dry and academic. I don't write a journal as often anymore as much as I really so much write the odd thing here and there -- anything from stories, to even quotes.

Still, they are interesting to see and sometimes I regret not having written about all the things that happened to me. Apart from a lot of crap, there were some very unique moments in my life, wonderful ones that I won't get back except through faded memory.

Well, that's about enough I think. Excellent thread btw. There were times I was thinking about this very thing

P.S. Was a weird kid. I'd often when younger go back to my old journals and spell check them ... until my mom told me I should just preserve them the way they were for posterity's sake -- to leave an imprint of what I was then. One of her many wise pieces of advice, I think.

Never really believed in them, maybe just because I'm a very internal person.

Strangely enough, writing journals seem to be pretty much everyone's favorite gift to give me . . . I usually wind up writing in them two or three times, and then after that they sit around gathering dust.

I've written ever since I learned to read, but I didn't start keeping a personal journal regularly until late in college. Before then, I would talk things out with my friends or, if I didn't have friends (what a sad time that was), just bottle everything up. Then, I got to thinking that the people I relied on were getting sick of me venting on them. Whether or not that was the correct assessment, I started just writing everything down instead of voicing the same things over and over again.

This is so weird. I actually just started a journal this week. I had started one in highschool but I quickly forgot about it (and the password to the file as well!) But I am determined to keep this one going. I had a quasi-journal where I'd write poetry, short stories that were really just vents. Some of them are alright and others are really bad but when I read them I know exactly where I was and waht I was feeling. one of my reasons for starting it is to articulate my thoughts better as I love to write fiction but somehow can't tranlate what is in my head to paper.

I've been keeping on again/off again diaries/journals/notebooks since the 3rd grade. The diaries I threw out. The journals are in a corner in my closet. I do read through them, fairly frequently, usually just to confirm suspicions (I have a horrible memory and an all too accurate internal clock).

During the last hurricanes, when I was going through my possessions, seeing what I wanted to save and what I wanted to leave for dead, I did consider taking them with me. But then I thought of what it would be like to get rid of them, and the feeling was so wonderful, so light, ....so FREED, that I left them. They survived fine, and one day I just might ceremoniously get rid of them (burying them has been suggested).

The advent of xanga has shown a dramatic decrease in my written journals, though. Very dramatic decrease.

Just out of curiosity, what, in your opinion, marks the distinction between a journal and a diary?

I've been writing about the events of my life and thoughts that i've had since maybe junior high, on and off. Most of the time, after a while, i get disgusted with myself for the things i've written, though, so i rarely go back and reread them. They do seem, however, to make things better at the time of the writing.

Like Amy, i find that keeping blogs has decreased both the amount of time and the amount of my desire to keep a written journal, though i still keep a notebook handy for random things.

Ronin, have you ever considered using those gifted journals for fiction rather than writing about your life?

i started a journal when i was eleven, after reading anne frank's diary. very obvious.

sometimes i'm rather disappointed when re-reading my journal. as circus said, they felt really good at the moment, almost brilliant.they were exactly what i needed to write.

there's a journal i'm really fond of. i started it when i was seventeen and i was going on interrail all by myself. that same summer i was gonna turn legal, so things were really fast and exciting and i'm glad i have written all those emotions down, and it's the only one i enjoy re-reading.

at the moment i don't really keep a journal. i have a bottle.
i always have a small notebook with me, write thoughts, memories and wishes on it and then i tear off the page and put it in a glass bottle. i wonder if one day i'll ever have the guts to smash that bottle and read those pages again.



sorry circus, i couldn't be able to tell the difference between journal and diary

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Originally posted by Circus:
Just out of curiosity, what, in your opinion, marks the distinction between a journal and a diary?

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In my head, a diary was more of a factual, boring, day by day transcription of the day.

The journals don't follow a timeline, aren't necessarily about real life events, and aren't a transcription of events, more of a way of a rendering of moods.

i keep trying to keep a journal, and i whenever i write in it i feel really really pathetic, like what i'm writing about have no import whatsoever.

i think i don't know how to keep a journal.

quote:

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Originally posted by qitqpqtq:

quote:

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Originally posted by Circus:
Just out of curiosity, what, in your opinion, marks the distinction between a journal and a diary?

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In my head, a diary was more of a factual, boring, day by day transcription of the day.

The journals don't follow a timeline, aren't necessarily about real life events, and aren't a transcription of events, more of a way of a rendering of moods.

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thats funny in my head they are the other way around, a journal is for like stuff that is happening day to day, and a diary is for like emotional outpourings when you need to...

that said, i'm very bad at keeping either, i have ones that i started and was determined to keep up, from like high school, but looking back they have an entry maybe like once every few months and then a few days entries then a year gap etc. And yes some of what was said does make me cringe, but i've kinda accepted how different a person i am now to what i was then, it makes me wonder what future me will think of the now me?

Edit: well ten second future me is kicking my butt for over excessive use of the word 'like', i sound very vacant teeny...

I've kept both Journals and Diaries since I was a teenager. These days I write journals because I blog my day to day stuff and my private journal is for emotional stuff.

Currently I have four different journals, one 'morning pages' journal ala The Artist's Way, one regular journal, and two online journals. I started eratic journal writing in high school and didn't start writing more regularly until about four and a half years ago.

I've been keeping a journal on and off since I was in college. I have three or four old ones in a drawer. I write in them only when I have something to say. These days, I don't have much to say. I'll write about my feelings; I'll write about what's going on in my life. Sometimes I just write down passages from books I've been reading or a poem or something that I liked. Sometimes I draw. Sometimes I write down lists of things I need to do.
I only go back and read them when I know there's a particular passage from a book or something that I've written down that I want to read again.

In the past five years I've become a totally obsessive compulsive journaler. Since 1995 I've kept an occasional dream journal, but would sometimes go for several months with no entries whatsoever. In 2000 I started keeping separate logs for every book I read and every movie I see, including a synopsis of the story, my thoughts and a 5 star rating.

Then I started a blog. And then I started a private journal. When I get old maybe I'll start keeping logs of my pills, what I eat for dinner, my bowel movements, etc.

i don't remember how old i was when i first began keeping a diary, but i know that i was already in the habit by the time i was in 6th grade (about 11 years old).

i had a huge crush on a boy in my class and i wrote about him frequently (i never spoke to him). One of my siblings stole my diary and read it and told the rest of my family about what i wrote about that boy. They teased me for the longest time, even my parents, quoting my own words at me. It felt horrible. I was furious beyond words.

so, my journaling was off-and-on after that, because i could never feel safe that my private writings would not be read again, until i got established in my own apartment.

at some point before i started xanga-ing, i slipped out of the habit again, and since i was using xanga i haven't gotten back into it yet, really. Although i'm trying now.

so far, i keep my old diaries. I'm not sure if i really want them around to be read after i die or not.

oh, and escher gave me a dream journal one christmas, but i haven't gotten to where i write in it regularly.

I've kept production journals ever since it was a requirement for me GCSE Theatre Studies. It became a good habit. Life outside the productions does leak in, but not to a great extent (the result of bad marks in said GCSE)so it's not a place that could be an emotional centre of me, but can be an emotional centre of my work. They have helped me to discover the structures that i find most useful, and the developement of my own aesthetics.

I don't keep a personal type diary, and couldn't imagine putting up a blog without some severe restrictions upon myself. But i do keep a Day Book, where i paste pretty pictures, articles, interesting feathers and small found items along with any personal catharsis necessary. And some really bad poetry.

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Originally posted by Circus:
Ronin, have you ever considered using those gifted journals for fiction rather than writing about your life?

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I have done so, a little bit. Mostly for just writing a brief scene or two, some lines that occured to me, or an idea or two. But since my writing has been very limited in the past few years, that hasn't really worked either.

Although lately my wiritng has, for the first time in years, taken a few baby steps, so that might happen in the future . . .

I was allowed next to zero personal privacy growing up. Every time I tried to write my thoughts and feelings down, my grandmother would find it and throw it in my face what a terrible person I was for having feelings that didn't fit with the out-dated cookie-cutter mold she had for me.

Writing in a journal now leaves me anxious that someone may find it, even password protected on the computer I can't get past the fear.

Teehee. I was in the same boat, parrotslave. I wrote a lot of stuff to piss my mom off on purpose.