I wonder how much my personal diaries would fetch? Maybe $10, if I were lucky
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I always find it interesting when a diary or journal of a celebrity/writer/poet is found and then auctioned off. I did find Anna Nicole Smith’s diary compelling. I read all that was available on the internet. No, I am not above that.
What I liked most about Smith’s diary was the misspellings and the way she just went stream of consciousness. She was clearly writing for herself, and this excerpt gives a good example of that.
Smith … noted — in a very freeform style — the beginning of her relationship with Paul Marciano, CEO of Guess Inc.
“O my Gosh!! Paul Marsiano called today to see if I got his books also I’m gonna go to San Antonio to do photo shoot,” she wrote on June 23, 1992. “I’m so excited!! I can’t believe this. This could be it.” The entry ends with five hand-drawn smiley faces.
Two days later she details a trip to a Nieman Marcus store where she bought $3,000 worth of clothing.
“I’m so happy they look great,” she wrote. “I hope it empresses Paul Marsiano. … I’m starving!! I’ve been starving myself.”
By August, Smith revealed a disdain for (over)eating … and growing frustration with Marshall, who was 63 years older than Smith. The two married in 1994.
“I’ve been really stressed out lately and depressed and I can’t quit eating. I feel like a pig. Howard has been buying me som jewelry but he calls me 15 or 20 times a day it drives me crazy. I love him but he aggravates me somtimes,” she wrote….
The entry ends with a large underlined “Chow!”
Anna Nicole was just a person, like you and me. She fell into stress eating, like most of us do, when things got crazy. I personally have never ended a journal entry with “Chow!” But I have stood many times in front of an open kitchen cabinet, surveying the contents, looking for my next crunchy bag of stress relievers.
This whole thought began with an article on Comcast’s news page regarding the poet Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin’s diary. Apparently they had a “turbulent” marriage and “according to lore, (she) allegedly stormed in and demanded to know if the celebrated Welsh poet — who she described as the “bloody man” — was dead yet.
So this chick Caitlin had a diary — that is now for sale, naturally — and one of the things she wrote, after her husband’s death was: “Oh God, oh Dylan, it must be cold down there; it is cold enough on top, in November: the dirtiest month of the year that killed you on the ninth vile day. If only I could take you a bowl of your bread, and milk, and salt, that you always drank at night, to warm you up.”
Thomas died on November 9, 1953. So his wife must have written that passage soon after that time. I guess we all grieve in our own way. I have to admit, she sounds so prim and proper. However, I think she was English and the Brits do seem to have a stiff upper lip when it comes to all of that.
So all of this brings me to my own journals. Frequently, when I write with pen and paper, I write to a person or an object. I rehash conversations and then insert the witty comeback that took me a week to come up with. I unleash all of the things I would have liked to say, but didn’t. And I do not censor myself like I do in real life.
I analyze why that person might have said what he or she said. Why they might have done the things they have done. And then I let the expletives fly. I write the hurtful things I wanted to say, but didn’t.
A little over ten years ago I bought a new journal to document my pregnancy with Katie. It started with my physical to prepare for the pregnancy. Initially everything was hopeful and I marveled at the idea of being a mother.
And then the path to motherhood took a huge U-turn. I found out I had cancer and my plans for motherhood were put on hold.
I did a lot of swearing in all caps in that journal. And I retired it when the cancer ordeal ended. I haven’t wanted to write in that particular journal since that time. And yet for some reason I keep it in my dresser drawer.
I don’t know if it serves as a reminder or a lesson. And I don’t think it would fetch very much on the open market.
Rants are a dime a dozen these days.
I don’t “get” why journals are so popular… or why reading celebrity or historical people’s journals are so popular, to be more specific.
Maybe I just haven’t found one that interests me yet?
I think most people (or at least I) find them interesting because it gives insight to the real person behind the persona. All of those celebrities and/or famous people are projecting a public persona that is mostly positive. To read the inner thoughts of someone who is famous is very intriguing to me.
Particularly the common theme of feeling inadequate or feeling like you must self-medicate with food. It makes the person more approachable and more real, in my opinion. And I find that fascinating.
I kept paper journals since I was a kid, and finally destroyed them all. My mom said I’d regret it – I do.
I *did* have a bunch of paper journals from childhood as well.
Now? Gone.
I have no idea where they went and I had been in and out of my parents’ basement a few years ago scouring the corners looking for the notebooks. It would have been interesting to see what was on my mind back then.
I threw out my diaries and regret it too. I thought it would make me feel liberated, but I actually feel more tied to the past now that it has become more of a mystery without that link back there.
Now I have my blog, that’s pretty cool :)
It is nice looking back at different points in your life, whether it’s through a paper diary or a blog on the internet. I find when I go back to read it always takes me right back to the mindset I was in. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes not so much.
I have never been a journal keeper. I remember starting one in middle school briefly. My parents read it and confronted me on it. I was humiliated. I never kept one after that and vowed to NEVER do that to a child of mine.
I do see the appeal of reading someone else’s though. It is probably the same appeal that leads me to read blogs. Except those are written to be read by anyone, so not as real or raw.
I could use a journal now to rant and rave in. I lost my job yesterday. Long story short I was not getting along with one of the partners (the chronically late one who had no regard for others’ time and treats all the staff horribly because she is a doctor and they are beneath her). She would frequently talk down to me ( I am younger then the 2 partners and not yet a partner). I lost it last week and we got into it. They asked me in to talk yesterday ( I am finishing up my vacation and was supposed to start back on Wed) “It is not working out,” they said. I have never been let go from a job before. sigh. I will be starting my own office now, which absolutely terrifies me.
There. That felt better to get that out. I can’t bring myself to write about it on my own blog so I had to dump that here.
That would totally suck if my parents read my journals and then confronted me. Because I remember some of the stuff I wrote in there (in the journals that are now gone) and it wasn’t flattering to my parents.
Geez Michelle. That really sucks about your job. I’m so surprised that they wouldn’t discipline *her* for her behavior and that they didn’t even give you a chance to state your side, just saying “It’s not working out.”
I’m actually honored that you would trust my little ol’ VIP Lounge to dump in. As Paula always tells me, “This is a safe place to vent.”
Good luck on your new practice. I think it would be very interesting to read a separate blog about owning your own practice, from start-up to up and running. Although, maintaining the blog while trying to actually start the business might be cumbersome.
I never really kept a journal, but did in the nine months my wife was pregnant with our daughter. I haven’t gone back and read that yet, but I’m sure it was hopeful and naive.
What a great journal for your daughter! Are you going to do that again, this time?
I’ve kept a journal on and off through my life, most notably when I was needing to clarify or work on some aspect of my life. I’ve done dreams, eating, poetry, drawings and just general (which, like CG, I found I did a LOT of capitalized cursing into during the hardest parts…) Max has started writing things down as well, he does drawings and writes songs, and says things about his days. I read them and we talk about them now, but I’m sure he’ll want some privacy sooner or later with his stuff, and I’ll have to make the break.
Blogging does fill some of the writing/journaling urge for me — I have the one that sort of hangs out for public consumption and I also have one that I just rave into. Not on the radar, probably won’t ever be.
Katie keeps a journal at school and we read through it together at the end of the school year. It was fun and an interesting peek into her mind.
I, too, have just recently started my private ranting paper journal. Not everything needs to be out there, I have realized (after doing tit the hard way — publicizing all of my stuff in the past). I find the paper journal mixed with the blog helps me find a happy medium.
Also, I think I am actually changing as well. The needs for this blog are starting to become different.
p.s. I haven’t received your letter yet. Can’t wait to get it though!
Hi C-Girl,
Well on the subject of diaries, I don’t have a lot of experiences to share since I never kept one and I don’t think Mrs. D ever did either.
I do think they can be interesting reading though.
I didn’t know you were a cancer survivor – I can only imagine what it must have been like, but I’m so glad to know it turned out well for you and the family.
Hope you have a great day.
Cancer sucked, just like you would think it would. But I was fortunate, it was caught early and all I needed was surgery. Now I take a violet pill every day.
I would be seriously freaked out if someone got hold of my personal diary. Seriously!
Oooh, now I want to read your diary, Solomon. What do you have to hide?
Oh no on the letter! I mailed that puppy – was it Wednesday? Thursday?? I thought surely you’d have gotten it by now. I feel the urge to pout.
Of course I wrote that and then the mail arrived two hours later. Guess what was in there? Your letter! It was fun and I’ve already written back *and* dropped it in the mailbox!
Oh lord, I have a tons of journals. The ones up to about age 25 are much more interesting than the ones I’ve been writing over the last 10 years or so.
When I was younger, I wrote all about conversations and events and stuff. Now I do all that online. Mostly now I write about stuff going on at work or whatever.
I also have journals for Dylan and Josh where I write down what they’re going and the funny things they say.
That’s such a great idea of keeping a journal for your kids about your kids. Good thinking!
my biggest regret about destroying personal papers is that I burned all my boyfriend’s love notes( he’s my husband now) during a time that we were apart…less than 2 weeks…..Now I really wish I had those notes…not that they were filled with sage advice but so I could remember how much in love we were at that stage of our relationship….. and all the notes I sent to him were thrown out by his mother along with some photos we took in our senior year of high school and the years before we got married. Why, why, WHY????
Wow, in two weeks you torched it all?!
Eh, re-reading that stuff is over-rated, methinks. Yes, it’s fun, but you can create new memories.
I just found my old written journals and my morning pages from The Artist’s Way about 10 years ago. Fascinating stuff – but only to me. Great entry!
Thanks Poolie! Are you sure that’s only interesting to you? It might make a fun post (insert hopeful doe eyes here).
I stopped writing in a paper journal in college. I was already writing in my blog, and it just made more sense to me as I can type far faster than I can write. Back when I started my blog, there was no feedback. You couldn’t leave a comment, unless you counted Diaryland notes, and I rarely got any of those. I think that kept the whole thing more personal, somehow, even though I knew it was out on the internet. But so few people had blogs back then.
I still have my paper journals from college and before. I had a diary in elementary school, and every time I would go somewhere, I’d keep another journal. So I have one from my trip to Kenya and another from my trip to Italy. But I was careful not to write down things I didn’t want people reading, since I had a brother 10 years younger than me who would think nothing of trying to blackmail me if he could. I just never gave him the ammo. ;o)
Wow, blue. So it all started at Diaryland, eh? I didn’t realize D-land has been around for so long.
You have so much more restraint than I do when it comes to the content in a paper journal. I know I had stuff back then (in adolescence and young adulthood) that was incriminating. That’s why it hangs in the back of my head that those journals were out there. Like I said, I’ve scoured my parents’ house, I know they’re gone.
I, too, have been a fairly faithful journal keeper. My junior year in HS I had a fabulous writing instructor who began my journal writing habits. We were told to bring it everywhere and write anything we felt an urge to retain. I ended up naming my first one and having all of my teen friends write a little something to the journal. After that first one, I began to always use the same size journal (no longer available – darn) and give them names alphabetically.
Then, I headed to grad school and got married and I don’t know if it was that life got more complicated or that I worried about having everything so easily identifiable. I began writing my rants on pieces of paper and stuffing them into various things (the odd book, an old yearbook, etc.) I hate to think what my husband will go through when I die. A lot of my rants (especially during our rough patch and separation) were about him, so it wouldn’t be fun stuff to read. I should buy a lock box and place everything I find in there. Man do I need some organizational skills, or what?!
I always had grand intentions of keeping a journal for my kids. I did start one for my first son, but it is pathetic how sporadically I wrote in it. I think now my sons will feel the nervous twinge that I grew up with. My father was a minister and our actions often ended up in his sermons (the whole congregation would turn and look at you – groan). Now, my sons know that if they do something, it might end up on my blog. I might like to use some all caps today regarding son #1′s actions!
Isn’t that funny how technology has changed things — now your blog is a source of public outing.
Just reading about your organization skills has got me itching to visit your place for an organizing spree. Anal retentive much, Cardiogirl? Why yes, no that you ask. I really love having a place for everything. It does go back to childhood.
One of my neighbors is extremely disorganized, I mean her house makes you stifle a gasp. Back when we hung out more I was having dreams that I spent the day organizing her house and I felt *so much* satisfaction at the end of the dream. God it was great to see the floor in her living room again!
In my dream.
re-reading that stuff is over-rated, methinks. Yes, it’s fun, but you can create new memories.
That is so true, for everyone.
Again, thank you sanjay. It’s hard letting go of the past sometimes, but focusing on the present is so much more satisfying.
CG, I wouldn’t bid on your diaries, but I would definitely buy your blog journals when you turn it into a book. Good read!
Really Natural? Gosh you flatter me (blushes and turns away). Thanks for the compliment! Maybe this is the push I need to actually finish that book rattling around in my head.
Oh, CG – Take on my house, would ya?! I’m thinking, “hey, it would give her such pleasure!” Plus, I’m thinking, “Man, would my husband be thrilled.” He used to really struggle with my weaknesses in this area, because he is, well, more like you! Thankfully, in the last few years (when the chaos really swelled because of little ones and stress), he has cut me more slack and doesn’t ride my back about it so much. Still, I feel his expectations and desires in the background and end every day wishing I had accomplished more.
I agree with Natural, too, I would buy your blog in book form! So, here’s another push in the WRITE direction!
In all seriousness, cleaning and micro-organizing is truly something I do to combat stress. I think working on your house would really be helpful right now. Have you ever watched “Mission Organization” on HGTV? It used to be on at 1pm last school year — guess what I watched during nap time?
They have some good ideas. OH!! If you’re interested, you could take pictures of certain areas and we could go corner by corner via email! But we don’t have to. I don’t want to be pushy.
Yeah, I have to get back to that project. It’s nearly 75% done. I don’t know why I procrastinate so. There’s always some reason, but I think I am going to try to focus on that again. A little bit each day will find me with more material to edit.
“Oooh, now I want to read your diary, Solomon. What do you have to hide?”
Lots of things! :P
Oh Solomon, you know you’re just peaking my interest, right? I’m going to be the first person to bid on *your* diaries :)
If I took pictures of all my areas, I’d have to own up to the true state of things, wouldn’t I? Now, mind you, when I read about not being able to see your friend’s floor, I thought, “Well, you can see my floor, for goodness sakes!” However, I do know that my kitchen table has always been a weakness (it accumulates stacks of paper, no matter how many other locations I come up with to put the darn junk).
My younger sons’ room is the worst. MS is the main problem, but it is really a problem because they have too many darn clothes and I’m just too worried if I get rid of them now, in a few months they’ll both be wearing the same size and I’ll have to actually pay money for clothes. MS pulls out everything just to find one shirt. I tried putting the clothes up high, but then it is a pain to constantly be shuffling stacks of clothes on the closet shelves.
I do acknowledge that I save too many things. I have lots of books on organization (ha! – my husband knows I’ll read them, I just can’t seem to put the advice into practice).
It is funny. Organizing relieves your stress, but organizing gives me the kind of stress that would push me over the edge! Isn’t it amazing how different people can be? Thankfully, my husband is realizing more and more that our differences balance us as a couple! Otherwise, my stress level would be monumental (either from trying to organize to his expectations or from relieving the stress by disassociating into a good book or writing).
Well, if you can see your floor, you are *way* ahead of my neighbor. It *is* funny how one man’s love is another man’s bane. Good luck! I know you’ll find a work around.