...the other day I ran across a Diary I had kept for a very short time at the beginning of Jan 1993. I'd quite forgotten I'd made an attempt to keep it at all. I'd always liked the thought of keeping a diary since about the age of nine, but was never very successful at it. The longest attempt I contiguously had was at age fifteen for about six months. I have always hated the tedium of writing by hand, which the computer age has greatly ameliorated.
Forthwith, here is my exact entry for Sunday, Jan 17, 1993 - Plus ca change:
"More raids in Iraq. Clinton is pissed because it takes away from his delusions of grandeur. "F" him. [no, I didn't spell it out then. A few days before the Iraqis violated yet again the cease fire agreement not to fly below whatever latitude they weren't supposed to fly below.]
Dad says Bush [I] is trying to kill Saddam before Clinton takes office and surrenders. [How prophetic dad was, given Clinton's pathetic response to the first attack on the WTC. Clinton was due to take office that coming Tuesday] 40 Cruise Missiles Used. To quote Cindy [X] 'it sort of makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?' [She and I had put in our time on Tomahawk projects in the 80s ]
Father S.'s mother at Mass tonight. [She was visiting from Chicago]
Finished Assault with Intent. "
I wonder if Pepys would blog if he was around today? It's not the same in that one does not generally convey one's most intimate thoughts on a blog, although here and there people do write with candor and passion about things closest to the heart. But a blog is only a small slice of one's life, and unlike Pepys, we tend not to encode our entries. For anyone who hasn't run across this famous diary, I suggest starting with his account of the great fire of London. (Starting Sept. 2, 1666) See the year 1665 for what it was like living through the plague!
How many bloggers still keep a traditional diary I wonder? Show of hands? I confess I don't. Although that's not to say I wouldn't in future. If I do, it's bound to be in electronic form on my laptop. I must say I enjoy giving the diary I kept at 15 a read, as it captured certain delights and pains of growing up that in some cases I'd forgotten.
And so, to bed.
.
2 comments:
I'm in the habit of doing "morning pages" - a concept picked from Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way. Her following book "Walking in this World" is quite good, too.
She is a tiny bit on the New Age edge (very tiny) but very easy to ignore the few things that are a bit off. I think she has a Catholic background and it interesting to see how she has grown spiritually between the two books.
I've tried the diary thing a few times. When in grade school, but don't even have that one now. One when I started college the second time, but that lasted one day because I didn't get much sleep as it was with just the school work. And, when I was pregnant with my son, a dear aunt gave me a diary and that lasted two days. Oh, and after I had my son I was given a scrap book. Whose impractical idea is that? I had newborn baby that wanted to nurse every two hours and I'm supposed to do all these frilly things and cut out pictures and make pretty pages and....yeah, right. I regifted it to a mom who adopted a baby. I would love to be a person who had the discipline and desire to keep a diary, but it's just not me.
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