When I was a little younger – okay, waaaaaaaaay-the-hell younger – I kept a diary. I think every girl my age back then did. It was a 3×5 sized, hardbound book, complete with it’s own lock and key, hundreds of sheets of lined paper, and Barbie pink, my signature color. I kept the key on a ribbon that perpetually hung from neck. I wasn’t going to let anyone get a hold of that key and find out all my deepest, darkest, secrets, my newest boy crush, or my thoughts about myself.
I got my first diary when I was eight and I remember I got to the last page by my tenth birthday. At that birthday, I received a new one – a little bigger at 4×6, but still pink, keyed, and the paper was lined.
I filled that one up by before birthday # 12.
I was a very diligent writer back then. I sat down on my bed most nights and just wrote. Anything. Stuff about how my day had gone, what teacher had reamed me for talking in class – this was a common occurrence and all my report cards back then had one common theme “Margaret-Mary needs to learn to sit quietly when she is done with her work, and not visit with the other children. She tends to be done faster than everyone else and has a tendency to disrupt the others who are still working.”
I would write about tv shows and the latest plotlines for my favs like Hawaii 5-0 ( the original one), The Brady Bunch ( hated Marcia AND Jan), Love American Style ( I learned everything I ever needed to know about sex with that show!).
I’d write about new books I’d read. Nancy Drew, Trixie Beldon and Agatha Christie were my absolute favorites.
I wrote a lot about what I was feeling at the time. My preteen, then Tween, then full teen angst was real, bold, and vibrantly displayed in the pages of my Barbie pink journal. Inadequacies about my body, my personality, my basic worth, were all tortuously categorized and detailed in vivid, descriptive words.
By the time I was in college, I was still writing down my thoughts and using a journal for an emotional outlet, a friend, and a confidant. The fact that the pages never offered advice, censure, or any kind of validation to my thoughts, didn’t seem to matter at the time.
Fast forward a few years and I got married, then pregnant. While I was waiting for my daughter to be cooked, I started a new journal just for her. It detailed all her vitals and personal stuff, how she was doing in utero – how I was, too. We didn’t know the sex and kept it unknown until she popped out. From day one of her actual life on earth, I started a new journal for her, again detailing all the events in her life, the milestones, my hopes and dreams for her.
I stopped keeping a diary for her when she started doing her own journaling at 7 years old.
What’s that dopey expression about apples and trees? Black pots and kettles?
Nowadays, I no longer have an actual hardbound book that I journal in. I tend to type all my thoughts and keep them stored on my laptop. Just like that key kept my diaries locked all those years ago against prying eyes, my password keeps my thoughts hidden now. Oh, and “skin” is – you got it – Barbie Pink!
But every now and then I write an entry that seems blog worthy. Like this one.
If you’re a writer, do you keep a diary/journal about “stuff?” I’d be interested in knowing. What kinds of things do you include? Life stuff? Writing stuff? Stuff stuff?
Let me know.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 